More specifically, she focuses on the often-harrowing experiences of black women, who encounter internalized racism, sexism, and violence within their own communities. In her book of essays
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), Walker describes herself as a "womanist"—a term referring to a black feminist, or one who "[a]ppreciates and prefers women's culture, women's emotional flexibility,… and women's strength" and is "[c]ommitted to survival and wholeness of entire people, male
and female."
In The Color Purple, Walker's commitment to nurturing wide-ranging and versatile images of black people is revealed in her use of nonstandard diction. Celie, the protagonist of the novel, communicates in a manner that is consistent with her life as a poor, uneducated black woman in rural America near the turn of the century. The novel has none of the indicators usually provided by an omniscient narrator; instead, the reader must piece together seemingly disparate bits of information from the letters in the novel in order to build a larger picture. For example, it is not uncommon for long, unspecified periods of time to pass between the letters. In fact, the novel, which spans approximately forty years, relies heavily on the details Celie provides and her descriptions of the other characters as indicators of time shifts and change.
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