SOURCE: Fraile-Marcos, Ana Marie. “‘As Purple to Lavender’: Alice Walker's Womanist Representation of Lesbianism.” In Literature and Homosexuality, edited by Michael J. Meyer, pp. 111-34. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000.

In the following essay, Fraile-Marcos discusses Alice Walker's The Color Purple in the context of the idea of “Womanism”—one which connects the African American female community.

If in the United States the 1980s belonged to African American women writers in terms of literary prominence, as it is generally agreed, the beginnings of that decade also saw the emergence of Black lesbian literature and criticism. Lesbianism was explored in novels such as The Women of Brewster Place (1980) by Gloria Naylor, where the chapter “The Two” is devoted to examine both the reactions of the black community to lesbianism and the meaning and implications of lesbianism for the two lesbian protagonists. Ntozake Shange in Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo (1982) has Cypress, the second...