In Search of The Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece

Salamishah Tillet is a scholar, activist, and contributing critic-at-large for the New York Times. She is the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American and African Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University–Newark. With her sister, Tillet cofounded A Long Walk Home, a nonprofit that uses art to empower young people to end violence against girls and women. She lives in New Jersey.

From a superstar academic and cultural critic, an exploration of Alice Walker‿s critically acclaimed and controversial novel The Color PurpleIn 1982, Alice Walker made history when she became the first Black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for The Color Purple. But Walker‿s novel, which tells the story of a young girl in Jazz Age Georgia, received as much criticism as praise. It launched heated conversations about race, gender, language, and sexual violence that echo to today.In this gem-like examination of the novel, the film by Steven Spielberg, and the hit Broadway musical, prominent academic and activist Salamishah Tillet combines cultural criticism, history, and memoir to explore Walker‿s work and its lasting importance. Based on archival research and interviews with Walker, Oprah Winfrey, and Quincy Jones, among others, In Search of The Color Purple is a provocative and personal book, a bold debut from an important public intellectual.