Eric W. Maroney
The goal of the unit is threefold; first, students will develop a definition of culture as well as an understanding of the way culture emerges, is shaped and changed. Second, students will develop analytical reading skills, and third, students will develop comparative analytical writing skills.
At the culmination of this unit, students will understand that a novel is a cultural artifact and that as an artifact, it tells us something about the people and period that created it, which includes an exploration of the way a historical period may have influenced a writer’s choices. Similarly, a key understanding the curriculum unit explores is the way literature can push back on and influence the historical period it emerges from. Culture, and therefore literature, reflect back on the material conditions of a period; thus, helping to shape that period. The relationship is a dialectical one in which culture/literature arises out of particular social and material circumstances but has the ability to influence the social and material conditions of the period it exists in.
The unit is then centered on following essential questions:
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What is culture and how is it created?
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Where do commonly held ideas come from?
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Does history limit, shape or impact literature or culture? How?
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Can literature or culture impact or shape history?
While students can use a biographical lens to approach the work, a cultural studies framework requires students to have a broader understanding of the period from which Walker’s writing emerges. The study is about more than just Walker’s particular experience but about the ideas, events, art and writers that make up the fabric of the period. The unit explores how this body of thought shapes Walker’s novel
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The Color Purple is a novel written in epistolary form. The protagonist, Celie, begins writing letters to God when her father rapes her at the age of fourteen. As the novel continues, Celie is married off to a man she calls Mr. _____________ (the reader later learns his name is Albert). Albert beats Celie, abuses her and forbids her to see her sister, Nettie. Unbeknown to Celie, Nettie finds herself in Africa as part of a black missionary team, but Albert hides Nettie’s letters and Celie assumes that she is dead.
Shortly into the novel, Albert’s mistress, Shug Avery, comes to live with them because she is sick. At first Shug is mean to Celie but Celie nurses her back to health and the two develop an intimate relationship. After learning that Albert has kept Nettie’s letters hidden for years, Celie leaves him for Shug Avery. The novel resolves itself when Celie inherits her family’s farm after her stepfather’s death. She makes a living off a small sewing business and is reunited with Nettie and her estranged children.
The historical period the novel was written in (1982) as well as the mid century that shaped Walkers early life influence Walker’s writing. She chooses to set the novel in the early 20
th
century and traces the life of her protagonist, Celie, as she confronts the world as a “poor, Black woman.” Celie is challenged by this reality throughout the novel which, reaches its crescendo as her husband, Albert, tells her, “You’re poor, Black, ugly; you’re a woman, you’re nothing at all4.” The novel sets out to explore the conditions of Black women in America but does not offer a coherent political ideology. Instead a variety of ideologies, popular throughout the mid century, make appearances in the text. Familiarizing students with the various strains of political thought will allow them to identify areas of the novel in which these ideas emerge. Students will also be able to use the novel as a way to complicate their understanding of the late Civil Rights Movement and the Second Wave of the Women’s Rights Movement. Too often these periods are taught as single narratives (or omitted altogether) leaving out the complexities and multiplicity of social and political thought that characterized the epoch.
Walker, who was born in Eaton, GA, grew up as the daughter of sharecroppers who lived in extreme poverty. In a biographical documentary,
Beauty in Truth5
(see teacher resources)
,
Walker describes the conditions of her childhood home as well as, the unending labor and sacrifices her mother, Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant, gave. As a youth, Walker was confronted with systematic racism. She attended segregated schools, but graduated as Valedictorian and earned a scholarship to attend Spelman College where she worked with the late historian Howard Zinn, author of a
Peoples History of the United States
. Walker’s participation in the sit-ins, which characterized the third period of the Civil Rights Movement (spanning from 1960-1965), put her in conflict with the conservative administration at Spelman. It was Zinn who helped her obtain a scholarship and transfer to Sarah Lawrence College where she graduated from in 1965. While at Sarah Lawrence, Walker worked with poet, feminist and activist Muriel Ruckeyser who is best known for her collection
The Book of the Dead
(1938) which explores the Hawks Nest industrial disaster that lead to hundreds of miners dying of silicosis. Walker has spoken about the influence Ruckeyser has had on her own writing including turning Walker’s poems over to her own publisher (see teacher resources for an interview of Walker discussing this influence).
The period in which Walker begins teaching and later writing is characterized by near social and cultural revolutions. Walker is a coming of age when in 1954, the Supreme Court decides in Brown vs. the Board of Education, that public schools must be desegregated. The following year, 1955, Emmet Till is brutality lynched by two white men who are later acquitted by an all white jury in Mississippi. Till’s mutilated body is featured in the pages of Jet magazine, a Black periodical. The magazine issue becomes a cultural phenomenon spreading awareness about the horrors of racism in the South and adding fuel to the Civil Rights Movement. Walker’s college years are dominated by the politics of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and the Woolworth sit-ins. During the summer of 1964, when the Civil Rights Act finally passes Congress, a series of riots erupt in northern cities from Philadelphia to Rochester to New York and New York’s Harlem. The riots are caused by poverty, unemployment, ghetto conditions and police brutality. As Walker leaves Sarah Lawrence and begins her early teaching career, Stokley Carmichael coins the phrase Black Power and the Black Panthers publish their 10-point program6. The politics that come to mark these moments make an appearance throughout Walker’s novel.
The Color Purple
depicts the extreme poverty of the Black family in the early 20
th
century as well as the grotesquely inhumane treatment of Black Americans, which is explored primarily through the subplot of Sofia’s character. Sofia is incarcerated for sassing the mayor’s wife and assaulting the mayor. While in prison, Sofia is brutalized and nearly killed. Students might consider how the experience of Emmett Till’s murder or the rebellions in the summer of 1964 may have influenced Walker’s depiction of the justice system and the creation of Sofia’s story within the novel. What does Sophia’s story add to the novel? What historical or cultural experiences may have influenced Walker’s imagining of Sophia?
As mentioned before, the novel doesn’t provide a central thesis on racism but instead creates a story set within a particular historical context in which racism is a significant feature. Influences of nonviolent resistance (Celie’s character), violent resistance (Sophia’s character), Black separatism (Nettie’s character) and Black capitalism are all present within the text. The film and its accompanying written text
, The Black Power Mixtapes7(
see teacher resources), explores the multiplicity of Black political thought emerging from the mid to late century. This resource allows students to explore the historical fabric that is the backdrop for Walker’s evolution as a writer. Students can use this pairing to examine how the novel represents or is shaped by the variety of ideas arising from this period.
Similar to the multiplicity of ideas concerning race and racism, the novel is also influenced by a variety of ideologies that dominate the 2
nd
wave of the women’s movement. A strand of feminist separatist thought threads throughout the novel and is embodied in Celie’s character. Feminist Separatism was popularized by writers such as Rita Mae Brown in 1960’s and 70’s; and espouses the theory that there can never be true equality between men and women; therefore, women are left to separate themselves from men to create spaces where they can thrive8. This is evidenced by Celie’s desire to partner exclusively with women and her rejection of Albert, her reformed former-husband, at the end of the novel.
In addition to Separatism, Shug Avery’s character stands out as being influenced by the politics of personal sexual liberation. She pursues her desires despite the reactions of the town around her even dating a young man 20 years her junior in the later half of the book. Similarly, Sofia’s character stands out as a matriarchal figure despite her absence throughout much of the book. This position indicates the power some feminists believe is inherent in motherhood. In a journal article entitled, “Black Feminism and Intersectionality,” writer Sharon Smith describes the conventional thought regarding the Black family and matriarchal figures:
In 1965, the US Department of Labor issued a report entitled, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” The report, was written by future Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and describes a “Black matriarchy” at the center of a “tangle of pathology” harming Black families, resulting in a cycle of poverty. “A fundamental fact of Negro American family life is the often reversed roles of husband and wife,” in which Black women consistently earn more than their men, argues Moynihan. The report states, “In essence, the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole.”
The report is evidence of the muddled thinking around the position of women in the family. On the one hand, feminists celebrate the strong matriarchal figure, while on the other the Moynihan report is evidence of the way mainstream thinking pathologizes female led families.
The novel and its film interpretation, which received heavy criticism for its negative depictions of the black family and black males in particular, is also a reflection of this multiplicity of thought on women and the family. Alice Walker is writing the novel as the Civil Rights Movement and Women’s Rights Movement are on the decline. The novel is very much shaped by the politics of its time.
In order to analyze how the ideas of the period may have impacted Walker’s development of her characters, students’ might explore the questions:
Describe Walkers depictions of males in the text? Why does Walker depict the male characters negatively?
or,
What social and material conditions may have influenced this decision?
Students might also read excerpts from essays or studies during the period to understand the body of thought that influences the novel.
A second goal of this unit is to develop students’ analytical reading skills. Students will consider the social and material conditions of the period Walker is writing in and consider how those realities may have impacted her choices as a writer. This approach merges with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) by focusing on CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.3, which asks students to, “Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).9” The standard is placed in conversation with the new history standards, specifically CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RH.11-12.7 which requires students to, “Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.” Essentially, students will study the events and conditions that impacted Walker’s life and the period in which she was writing. Further, the unit asks students to explore the meaning created by the technical and literary choices Walker makes while investigating the historical influences on her craft decisions.
Students will use close reading to analyze passages, thinking about the details, images, symbolism or other literary techniques Walker employs to develop her characters. Ultimately, the unit will guide students to develop an understanding of the influence socio-political contexts have on a piece of literature as they explore primary source documents, essays, and other works of culture that emerge from the same period. By pairing Walker’s novel with other works of culture (song, poetry, art, film) as well as critical nonfiction, the unit will complicate student understanding of the essential questions.
The final goal of the unit is to develop students’ comparative analytical writing skills. This unit is being developed inside a district curricular requirement which requires students to compare a text and film adaptation analyzing the way the artists choices alter meaning and the way medium limits, expands or shapes the construction of a story. As a final assessment, students will write a comparative analysis about the novel, The Color Purple and its 1985 film adaptation by Steven Spielberg. Using the cultural studies framework described above, students will define and describe the way ideas of right and wrong evolve over a given period. In this case, morality is influenced by the socio-political fabric of the Civil Rights Movement, the 2
nd
Wave of the Women’s Rights movement and the reaction to those advancements. Students will select 2-3 scenes in the novel and compare them to the corresponding moments in the film. Students will apply New Criticism methods of analyzing literature by investigating the way Walker uses particular words, images and details to develop character at points in the novel. Students will layer a cultural studies frame and critical literacy methods by investigating the social and political context that influences Walker’s understanding of morality and ultimately shapes the choices she makes as an author.