Hello and welcome to Queer as Fiction. My name is Jason.

My name is Alice. I'm Eli.

And today we're going to be talking about Alice Walker's

1982 epistolary novel, The Color Purple.

Before we begin, we have quite a few content warnings for this episode. There are

several mentions of sexual assault, racism, both specific and systemic, colonial occupation,

violence, abusive relationships, death, incarceration and lynching, incest, and childhood

sexual abuse. I think I've covered everything.

Okay, so the colour purple was written by Alice Walker,

who is, in fact, still alive.

She's doing really well for herself.

She's 74, apparently.

Okay.

Who is a novelist, poet, and activist.

She is famous for coining the term womanist

to mean a black feminist or feminist of color in 1983

just after this novel was published.

For a bit of context about her, she grew up in rural Georgia where both her parents were

sharecroppers and the schools were segregated.

Her family lacked access to a car, which meant an accident involving a BB gun when

she was eight years old, caused her to go blind in one eye due to a lack of medical attention.

Okay. Despite the fact that Alice Walker wrote a novel that is considered to be like an all-time

...