Day 14  Issues  21 February 2002

 

1. Names.  Questions about exams? Look, maybe, at those alternate Civil War scenarios in Day 5.  http://www.bluffton.edu/~gundyj/ModAm/dailyfiles.html . They seem strong on history, stronger than I’d expect from you all, but weak on projecting outcomes that seem plausible and take issues of violence and nonviolence and their effects seriously, which I do expect from you..

 

2. Issues for the day:

 

A. Africa and all that stuff. What is life like there? Sense of old traditional life, idyllic in some ways, but women aren’t treated much (if any) better there. Multiple wives, working while the men sit around and drink palm wine. Friendships among women. Scarification and female genital mutilation. 100+ million women—that’s more or less the number of adult women in the U.S. www.danheller.com/images/Africa/Montage/Slideshow/img15.html

 

144 Olinka and women, 153 women as friends.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index.shtml

 

Progress in Africa is more or less unmitigated disaster for the Olinka and all but a small group. Globalization, before its time. Destruction of jungle and natural environment for export crops grown on plantations.

 

Missionaries in Africa. How are they depicted? Samuel and Corrine? How much do they accomplish? What do we know about the missionary movement? Mennonites went early in this century, what used to be called the Congo Inland Mission. See http://www.aimmintl.org/home.htm for some information about this group. The great controversies about mission work have to do with “spreading the Gospel” vs. bringing Western culture and social norms, evangelizing vs. development, etc.

 

B. Women and education and how to respond to oppression. As Magda points out, at first Celie’s response is not just passivity, but acceptance of her ignorance and powerlessness. Being a tree: trees are not just hard, they’re immobile and, well, dumb, right? 122-123 Nettie to Celie on God and keeping quiet and ignorance and learning. 124: “There are colored people in the world who want us to know!” Seeing New York City, and Harlem, where black people have money and property.

 

What’s Celie’s first response to the letters? 134: “I think I feel better if I kill him.” Shug gets her to sewing: “A needle instead of a razor in my hand.”

 

160 the real story of Pa and the family. “You must be sleep,” she writes to God.

 

Next one she writes to Nettie. And that leads into the next issue:

 

C. Religion. 142 Olinka and roofleaf and their religion. That crucial passage 175-179, discussion with Shug. About God as old white guy vs. God as everywhere. The color purple. Duane Friesen’s reading of that passage, maybe a way of softening Walker’s own view a bit?

 

 

 

What about religion as an issue in modern America? We haven’t talked about it much at all, but surely it’s one of the most contested areas of public life. Even among those who claim to be Christians there’s a very wide range of beliefs and practices and priorities and politics.

 

What role does religion play in this book? What about “Pa’s” first statement/command to Celie? For him God is just another means of control, a means of maintaining his dominance and covering up his crimes and sins. 

 

So what is God worried about? Women getting jobs and putting their children in day care? Gays and lesbians and the right to pray to Jesus out loud in school? Killing the enemies of America anywhere in the world?

 

Next time: be sure to pay close attention to the scenes where Shug and Celie talk about leaving, especially the encounters between Celie and Mr. ____. And to the further encounters they have in the last part of the book.

 

And think about a key issue that we’ll be talking more about: where do we locate responsibility? If people have tough lives, how much do we expect them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, how much do they need help from “outside,” formal or informal? The set of questions at the AAWN website, fascinating in what they suggest. http://aawn1.tripod.com/

 

Web Sites

 

Lori Pongtana

websites: FGM - http://www.religioustolerance.org/fem_circ.htm  

Facial scarification -

www.danheller.com/images/Africa/Montage/Slideshow/img15.html

Lori Pongtana

 

Magda Perz

http://www.bethel.edu/~letnie/AfricanChristianity/Sub-SaharaHomepage.html .

I decided to have a website that would show the work of missionaries sent to Africa.

 

Darin Riffle

http://aawn1.tripod.com/ African American Women’s Network

 

Rachel Mack

The website I found was http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/purple.html

I thought this site was interesting because it had some questions at the beginning relating instances in The Color Purple to society and how it was run.  The next section of the site gives different links about places that give information about Alice Walker.  And the last section gives links to different sites about women’s writings and African Americans’ writings and also other African American women writers to study.

 

Steven Roach

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index.shtml

 

The Web page I have chosen is The history of Africa.  This discusses the

many missionaries that have came to Africa including the first ones in 1490.

Then it goes on to discuss the white missions in the 19th century and the

first black missions in the 19th century. 

 

Amanda Mills

I choose this site not only as a reference to my response, but also as a

study guide because it provides great info on this book.

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/purple.html