The Color Purple
Series: Color Purple, Book 1
By: Alice Walker / Narrated By: Samira Wiley
Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
Seriously—if you already have this audiobook read by A. Walker, you are TOTALLY going to wanna buy it again. Brava to Ms. Wiley!!!
Yup! I have that version of the AWEsome The Color Purple, and I’ve already reviewed it here at Audiobook Accomplice. And I already loved it. It was juuuuuust that the narration had me wanting a bit more than author Alice Walker could provide whenst reading her own work. She had rather flat tones and provided emphasis only in the spots that absoLUTEly called for it. But still, the writing, the story, is so gosh awfully good that there was no way not to love it.
Enter the re-release, narrated by Samira Wiley…
From the very first sentence, she had me. And I was practically in tears because the Celie I’d come to know and love (In my head) was suddenly bursting into emotionally evocative life. Ms. Wiley brings a young girl to us, confused, beaten down, frightened and full of this tiny spark of life and love which is constantly being challenged by circumstances and by people. As she writes her letters to God, it’s a tiny voice, abused, being raised to an entity who does NOT have her back. But she writes anyway, loves deeply anyway.
Do I need to tell you the story? A young black girl is forced to marry Mister, an abusive man who wanted Celie’s little sister Nettie, and she’s tormented by his children, demeaned by his demands, used and degraded every step of the way. When Mister throws Nettie out of the house, the sisters are separated, especially as Nettie goes on to join a married pair of missionaries on a journey to Africa.
Meanwhile, this life of dulled senses is upended when Mister’s mistress Shug Avery, ailing and ornery, comes to stay. Though she’s cruel and outspoken, she comes to heal under Celie’s kind hand and kind ways. She will become the love of Celie’s life, and it’s through Shug that Celie finds God in the world again, the joys and delights of soft fragrances, and of colors bursting throughout nature. The scenes of intimacy are gentle and written with such love for Celie, it’s as though Walker were offering up a beloved “child”, aching and vulnerable, to Shug, to love, to spirit.
The story is peopled with memorable characters, with terrible violence and trauma, with tremendous strength and resilience. Celie, once cowed and beaten, learns courage through the example of stepson Harpo’s spirited wife, Sophia. Though Sophia’s story goes fatally awry, though she spends years downtrodden and humiliated, she comes back full of a lusty zest for life. And there’s little Squeak (Mary Agnes! whose song is actually crooned by Wiley), and there’s Nettie looking after Celie’s son and daughter even as she struggles to make a life in Africa, even as she never gives up, writing Celie faithfully through the years. And there’s Shug! And at the end, there’s the sweetest relationship between a strong and full-of-grit Celie and a newly-alive Mister.
Sooooo many people and soooo many stories that they come with.
This version of the book states that it is part of a trilogy, and if I remember right, the next one: The Temple of My Familiar was a horrible disappointment for me as every male turns into a wretched, faithless jerk. But I digress. I only mention it to say that perhaps I’ll stop right here with this fabulous production of what was already a simply gorgeous book.
And seriously! You’ll want the narration of Samira Wiley: I’ve read the book COUNTless times, have listened to the audiobook twice. But by the end, an ending I’m oh sooo familiar with?
I was sobbing like a baby, my husband grinning and asking, “That good, huh?”
Oh yesssss! Samira Wiley makes it THAT good…!
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