Struggles of African-American Women

Upon watching the movie The Color Purple, one thing that kept running through my mind was the powerful fact that not only did black women have to worry about discrimination for being black, but they were faced with it for being women, too. This movie opened my eyes to what black women were faced with not even a hundred years ago. The main character lived such a terrible life amongst the supporting females as well. By fourteen she had already been pregnant twice by her step father who sold her children at birth!

As if that wasn't already hard on its own, she wasn't given any say in who she married. Her step father passed her to an abusive and controlling man. The man hid letters from her sister and even openly showed affection toward another woman, Shug Averey. Shug and Celie really hit it off, though. Shug was the one who exposed the hundreds of hidden letters from Ceile's sister and eventually was the one to pull her out of the hell hole that Celie's husband made for her.

She finally reunited with her children and her sister at the end of the movie, but it's sad that this woman spent literally her entire life fighting and struggling. The shocker for me was that it wasn't even the stereotypical story of a white man suppressing a black person. These men were African American men and yet they treated their women no different from the white men and the slaves! It was really mind blowing!

There was another character, Sofia who was forced to be a maid of a white woman. When Sofia was in the grocery store with her white woman, she ordered Sofia to get the groceries for her. Celie ended up being there and helped Sofia out by getting the groceries for her. Celie was in a far better position than Sofie, but she still went out of her way to help her out. It was the same way when Shug helped Celie out seeing as Shug was the mistress of her husband, a showgirl who lived a pampered, happy life. Given that she was myriads ahead of Celie in social hierarchy, she still stuck her neck out for her by helping her.

This goes for the bond between Celie and her sister, too. Even though Celie's sister was in Africa dealing with all of the obstacles that it brought; she still took the time to write Celie letters as often as she could. What the movie also revealed was that Celie's sister was actually helping raise Celie's children, Adam and Olivia who were taken away in the beginning of the movie. As the movie was ending, Shug announced to Celie's husband that she was taking her away. When the men at the table protested, Sofia, Celie, and Shug all stuck together to overshadow their protests. This unity was a common theme throughout the movie and tied in together all the way up until the end when the sisters reunited in their childhood home where the story began.

While on the train home, Celie saw a young black girl running after the train. She responded to the girl by throwing chocolate gold coins out for her. I believe that this was symbolism to show the unity that she was sharing with not only the next generation, but with all women for that matter. By passing those coins to her, it was basically showing that she was passing the future to her. That's what I got out of it, anyway

Overall, this was a very powerful movie and it opened my eyes to a lot that I never noticed before. While African American women were forced to battle the turmoils of racism, but they also had to struggle with society's discrimination again women, too! This truly shows the strength that they had to have dealt with and survived all this. Women have come a really long way in the last hundred years, but black women have come even further.