The Color Purple by Alice Walker is the type of book that brings out every emotion in you. Before reading it you have to be prepared to laugh and cry. When I say cry I don’t mean just shed a tear that flows down slowly on your cheek. I mean the type of tears that just keep coming. This story is told in the form of letters between to beaten upon African-American sisters and to god. It takes place in the time about thirty years before World War II in both rural Georgia and Western Africa. This book was especially touching to me because like many people who have read it, I have two little sisters who I love dearly and mean the world to me. And in the story, the main character, Celie is separated from her sister, Nettie. If I had to chose my one complaint about the writing in this novel, it would be that the story’s shocking events move so fast that the reader does not have a chance to process what just happened to their loved characters. For example, in the first two pages of this book, two major facts are thrown at you that without doubt shock you and make you extremely mad at one of the thoroughly loathed antagonist. When I picked up this book I didn’t expect to immediately find out that Celie, as a fourteen year old, was raped regularly by who she believed to be her father, and had had two children in the past who were taken from her over night and that she believed were killed in the forest.

In my opinion, this book best falls under the genres of African-American historical fiction (my personal favorite), and romance. The Color Purple by Alice Walker is a book that I highly recommend to everyone and anyone because I think it is a truly heartwarming and life-changing book that gives you a whole new understanding of black female history.