Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. The 1985 movie, The Color Purple, is a stone-cold classic. Stephen Spielberg directed, Quincy Jones, did the music. Oprah Winfrey made her acting debut. All three of them are involved in this new version of the movie coming out, the musical. Now, the Color Purple had already been turned into a pretty successful musical on Broadway,

so it'll be interesting to see if it works on screen.

But I wanted to play you this interview from 1982 that NPR's Faith Fantra did with Alice Walker

right after she published The Color Purple.

Because, listening back, it's kind of incredible that either adaptation worked,

you know, both artistically and commercially, considering how heavy the themes are in the book,

you know, we're dealing with rape, incest, real harsh stuff. But Walker says something poignant,

which is that the only people she thinks would have a hard time with the material are people who are,

quote, uptight and bigoted and afraid in their own lives.

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Reviewers say of author Alice Walker that she is exceptionally brave.

She takes on subjects that would scare off most writers.

Her latest novel, The Color Purple, explores the survival of black women in a

harsh world of rape, incest, and domination in the Deep South. But Walker says that the color

purple is more. It's a story about heroic lives and love as well. I asked her how the main

characters in the book, Seeley, Nettie, and Shug developed.

I was living in Brooklyn, and I kept thinking that I wanted to write a story based on some

things that, you know, had been interesting to me, some things that had happened, you know,

in Georgia, some things that were happening to me.

...