WS Chronicle

By Felecia Piggott-Long, Ph.D.

Womanist is a term that originates from the scholarly work of Alice Walker, the author of “The Color Purple,” the first epistolary novel. This novel received the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1987, as it was written as a series of letters to God. However, the womanist ideology, which provides its foundation, appeared in Walker’s book “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose” (1983). Her landmark essay, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” published in Ms. Magazine in 1974, reveals how the social, political, and economic restrictions of patriarchy and racism have historically crippled the creativity of African American women.

Patriarchy is the domination of women by men, and the film, “The Color Purple,” challenges patriarchy over and over again. From the very beginning of the film, Mister is playing his banjo to provide music for Celie and her sister Nettie while they play in the expansive Tree of Life in the yard. Although Mister dominates Celie during the film, this opening foreshadows Mister’s future change of heart. When Celie advises Harpo to beat Sofia when she refuses to follow Harpo’s demands, Sofia sings the song, “Hell No!” Sofia sings, “If a man raises his hand, Hell No!” 

Womanist is a term denoting a movement within feminism, primarily championed by such  Black feminists as Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Margaret Walker, among others who tend to weave “traditional Black female activities of rootworking, herbal medicine, conjure, and midwifery into the fabric of their stories,” according to Angelyn Mitchell, editor of “Within the Circle: An Anthology of African American Literary Criticism from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present” (Mitchell 416). Walker and other womanists express themselves through Black women’s language traditions instead of trying to imitate the white literary tradition.

Throughout the film, Celie and many of the African American women in the film lift up the womanist traditions.Tamela Mann as First Lady of the church delivers a powerful rendition of “Sunday Morning,” bringing the women together. Another powerful solo was offered by Phylicia Pearl Mpasi in “Lord Send Me a Sign,” a song about her baby Olivia. Fantasia Barrino captures our hearts with each solo she performs. Taraji P. Henson wows the crowd with “Push the Button.”

It was a winsome inclusion to feature Whoopi Goldberg (Celie in the former movie) as the midwife who delivers Celie’s child. Also, the celebration of women’s culture and love for all in the community includes Celie’s gift for cooking for her mean husband, her disobedient stepchildren, her husband’s mistress, Shug Avery, for Sofia when she is in jail, and those who join the circle around the welcome table at the end of the film. Also, Celie is constantly finding creative items to make in her spare time such as quilts, a green knitted sweater she gives to Sofia when Sofia is released from prison and has to work for the mayor’s wife. A womanist also reflects on a child who is “acting womanish” or is interested in adult activities. Celie is forced into child-bearing before she is an adult by her stepfather, Alphonso Harris. 

Many people wonder why the color purple is so important to Walker. Her definition of the womanist ideology includes this analogy:  “Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender” in the preface of the 1983 text. This analogy discloses that a womanist is a deeper, richer form of a feminist. An African American feminist champions deeper, richer language traditions and cultural traditions that we find in the novel as well as in the movie. Shug Avery mentions the color purple when she and Celie walk through the field of lavender flowers. “I think it pisses God off when we walk past the color purple in a field and don’t even notice it,” Shug says.

The womanist is committed to the survival of the entire community. She loves men, women and children. She loves music, dance and struggle. When Shug Avery crosses that county line, men and women are ready to cheer. When Celie leaves Albert and goes with Shug to Memphis, she opens up her own business as a pants maker. After Albert has a change of heart and pays for the immigration papers for Nettie and Celie’s family to come back from Africa, Celie invites Albert to the Easter supper around the welcome table. This dinner is a fine symbol of reconciliation between Celie and Albert, and Shug and her father, and others.

The womanist ideology has been embraced in the fields of literature, art, music, psychology, theology, and other fields of study. According to the Google definition of womanist theology in layman’s terms, “Womanist theology attempts to help Black women see, affirm and have confidence in the importance of their experience and faith for determining the character of the Christian religion in the African-American community.”