Alice Walker, Author and Medium

    (What a lousy day I’ve had. I failed that quiz in English; I’m a week behind in Algebra…. All I want to do is sleep. Wait, I have that Psychology paper due tomorrow. I should stay up and do that. Nah…. Alice Walker and The Color Purple can wait. I’ll get up early tomorrow morning.) I set my alarm for 5:00am and became unconscious in seconds.  
    A piercing shriek shocked me from my slumber. My pillow was soaked, my body in fetal position. The sound of velvet words floated into the room, followed by a sharp command. The velvet came closer, and I began to uncurl in its presence. My eyes opened to a small, strong figure with her arms around me.  
    “It’s okay, my child. You’re with me now.”  
    Silence followed the sounds of empty tears and pitiful sighs that entered my thoughts. I tried to sort through my memory of what had occurred before the initial scream. The velvet came again, soothing my tears. She smiled, introducing herself as “A.W., author and medium.”  
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”  
    “Never mind, dear. You’re safe now, and that is what matters.” She had a point. The commanding tones had faded. (I’m going to have such a headache in the morning.)  
    I shook my head again in an attempt to clear the cobwebs of fear and confusion. “Who are you again?” I asked.  
    “Alice Walker, my dear- author and medium.”  
    “What… happened to me?”  
    “Nothing, Celie. You’ll be fine. Trust me.”  
    “My name’s not Celie… it’s…” I couldn’t remember my own name. “I… I… I….”  
    “Shhh-shhhh. You’ll be fine.” I drew a quick breath as I heard the sharp voice returning.  
    “Alice, help!” The velvet floated away from me, and my avez peur seeped farther into my soul. Another scream ripped through my body.  I awoke with a start. My pillow was soaked. A velvet voice soothed my screams.  
    “I’m here now, Samantha. It’s okay.”  
    “Who are you?”  
    “Alice Walker, author and medium.” (Hey… maybe I should get a jump on my psychology paper….)  
    “Alice? May I call you Alice?”  
    “By all means, dear, do.”  
    “Well, you see, I’m doing this psychology paper on The Color Purple, and I was wondering if you’d… well, no. Never mind.”  
    “What is it, Sam? May I call you Sam?”  
    “Sure.”  
    “What is it you want to know?”  
    “Well… why did you write it like you did?”  
    She smiled, and her teeth gleamed ever so slightly. “There’s many small things imbedded in that novel. Like human sexuality.” She winked, her chocolate eyes twinkling.  
    “Do you want to start with that, Alice?  
    “The novel does.”  
    (Take a deep breath, Sam. This is where this gets interesting.) “Why did you open the book with Celie’s account of her rape by Pa?”        
    “It draws the reader’s attention. There is a cultural obsession with sex that is violent and deviant. By using the rape in the beginning of the novel, I’ve easily captured the focus of the reader so that I may divert it to more important matters (Bloom 219).”  
    “I guess I still don’t understand. You still could have started with Celie being beaten by Pa. That would have captured the reader’s attention. Why use sex?”  
    “Starting the novel with sex allowed me to reverse the role of standard pornography. I was able to make a fairy tale stand on it’s head to my liking (Bloom 219).”  
    “Make a fairy tale stand on it’s head?”  
    “Yes. What’s characteristic of fairy tales?”  
    “That all depends upon the fairy tale.”  
    “True. Try ‘Sleeping Beauty.’”  
    “Um… evil witch, little fairies, rescued by the prince?”  
    “Good. Now think about The Color Purple.”  
    “I don’t get it.”  
    “Well, who would be the prince?”  
    I had to think about that. There was no fair maiden, no Prince Charming. (When all else fails, guess blindly, right?) “Albert?”  
    “You’re catching on.”  
    “But Albert isn’t exactly Prince Charming.”  
    “Precisely. I allowed myself to take a fairy tale and subvert it.”  
    “Why would you do that?”  
    “Life isn’t like a fairy tale, Sam. You know that.”  
    “Yes, but why write it at all?”  
    “The novel, you mean?”  
    I nodded. “What was the intent?”  
    “I wanted to give a voice to those ‘who have been silenced in life and literature’ (Bloom 66).”  
    “But who exactly is that?”  
    “In general, black women. However, I also wanted to give a voice to those who have beaten the odds.”  
    “What odds?”  
    “There are ‘so many people like Celie who make it, who came out of nothing. People who triumphed’ against all odds. Those people needed a voice. I took on the task of giving them one (Bloom 67).” She stood, adjusting her drawstring slacks. “Would you like a cup of tea?”  
    “Please.” I stood, presuming the conversation was to proceed to the kitchen.  
    “You don’t need to get up. I’ll get the tea. Is Earl Grey all right?”  
    I sat back down. Her dreadlocks bounced gently as she walked into the kitchen. I heard water running and paper ripping as I glanced around at the sheer expansiveness of Alice’s home. The fireplace was crackling softly. I rose and made my way over to the hearth. I poked at the fire. It seemed to blend right in with the soft red and brown tones of the living room. I got the feeling she was a very earthy person. I put the fire poker back in its holder just as Alice returned with the tea.  
    “Oh, thank you, Sam. I had been meaning to tend to that myself.”  
    “Yeah, sure. No problem.”  
    Alice set the mugs down and took my hand. “It was problem enough for you to tend it for me. Thank you.”  
    “Thank you… for what?”  
    “You went to the trouble of turning over the firewood, and I thank you for your trouble.”  
    I couldn’t quite grasp what she was poking at. “You’re welcome.”  
    “Now, where were we?”  
    I consulted the notes I had taken. “The reversal of fairy tales... I suppose that applies to Celie and Shug’s relationship as well?”  
    “Yes, in part.”  
    “Which part would that be?”  
    “There is the obvious relationship itself, and also, they allow their desires to alter social structure. Desire does that. It won’t ‘conform to social prescription’ (Bloom 217).”  
    “Which means what, exactly?”  
    “It means that the love Celie and Shug share changes the way things work at the house. It changes their little society. There are things in life that just don’t follow the preconceptions of society. Desire and love are two of those things.”  
    I nodded. “What other deliberate reversals are there in the book?”  
    Alice had to stop and think about that for a while. I felt as if I had asked an inappropriate question and had made her feel uncomfortable. But, deed already done, I sipped my tea and awaited her response.  
    “Two more come to mind. Albert and Shug’s affair contradicts the sanctity of his and Celie’s wedding vows; and Shug’s affairs with many men reverses the common thought of monogamy.”  
    “Why did you deliberately alter so many things? Were you trying to upset people?”  
    “No. I just wanted people to see that life doesn’t come with an instruction manual. There is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to write a book. Or to be in love.”  
    “Are there any other things to show that point? I mean, Shug seems to be about as out of Life’s Manual as one can get. And what does ‘Shug’ mean, anyway?”  
    Alice chuckled softly. “Shug is short for Sugar. And the woman, like the substance, provides excitement without true nourishment (Bloom 217).” (Wow. I would never have made that connection. I wonder if she’d melt in the rain.)  
    “What other characters are representative?”  
    She sipped her tea. “Celie is based upon my grandmother.”  
    “You mean all those awful things really happened to her?”  
    “Not precisely. She was raped at the age of twelve by her slave owner, my grandfather. But she never overcame her life.”  
    “So Celie is a sort of vicarious figure from your grandmother’s life?”  
    “You could say so. It’s not precise, again, but it is close. I made sure Celie became content with her life. ‘I liberated her from her own past. I wanted her to be happy’ (Bloom 67).”  
    “What about you? Are you happy?”  
    Alice smiled. “Yes. ‘I’m as happy now as I was sad as a child’ (Whitaker 5). I love life. I love to write. Writing has been a life-changing experience. The Color Purple has been a large part of that.”  
    I could hear a faint ringing sound in the far corners of the house. (I wonder what that is…?) I looked around, trying to identify the direction of the sound. Alice looked in the same direction, but I noticed that only one eye seemed to focus. “Alice, may I ask a stupid question?”
    “There are no stupid questions, my dear.”  
    “Well, then may I ask a slightly inappropriate one? You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.”  
    “What would you like to know?”  
    “What’s wrong with your eye?”      
    A maternal look spread across her face. “When I was eight, my brothers and I were playing Cowboys and Indian. I had my bow and arrow; they had their BB guns. One of them shot at me, and the pellet hit me directly in the eye. They scar tissue was removed, but I cannot see out of that eye (Jackson 2).”  
    I heard the ringing again, louder this time, followed by that same sharp command.  
    “Samantha? Sam! Get up! You’re going to be late for school!” (Mom?)  
    “Alice? Just one more quick question.”
    “Yes?”  
    “If you had to sum up the message of The Color Purple in one statement, what would it be?”  
    She pondered the question for but a second. “‘Each person [needs] to struggle against unjust oppression’ be it in the home, or the community, or in society (Bloom 69). Good luck on your paper, Samantha.”  
    “Samantha Marie! Get up this instant.”  
    “Yes, Mother.”  
    “Don’t you have a psychology paper due today?”  
    “Yes.”  
    “Well, where is it?”
    “I haven’t….” I noticed a piece paper sitting on my desk. “What that over there?” My mother handed it to me. I read the title page aloud: “Alice Walker: Author and Medium, by Samantha.” (But I never wrote the…I was dreaming…wasn’t I?) Then I noticed something I hadn’t seen at first. One the next page was a Post-it note that read:  
    “Sam- I thought you would appreciate the extra sleep. In peace, A.W.”

Works Cited