A little bit of literature

“Don’t let them run over you, Nettie say. You got to let them know who got the upper hand. 

They got it, I say. 

But she keep on, You got to fight. You got to fight. 

But I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.

(...)

Well, sometime Mr. _____ git on me pretty hard. I have to talk to Old Maker. But he my husband. I shrug my shoulders. This life soon be over, I say. Heaven last all ways. 

You ought to bash Mr. _____ head open, she say. Think bout heaven later.

(...)

I say, Until you do right by me, everything you touch will crumble. 

He laugh. Who you think you is? he say. You can’t curse nobody. Look at you. You black, you pore, you ugly, you a woman. Goddam, he say, you nothing at all. 

Until you do right by me, I say, everything you even dream about will fail. I give it to him straight, just like it come to me. And it seem to come to me from the trees.”

Vocabulary build-up

The transitive verb shrug means “to raise (the shoulders), especially as a gesture of doubt, disdain, or indifference.”

The intransitive verb crumble means “to give way; collapse; to fall into small fragments or pieces; disintegrate.”

Comments

Alice Walker (1944-) is a Georgia-born black woman before being anything else. She is a writer whose novels, short stories, and poems are noted for their insightful treatment of African American culture, especially about women. Walker was the eighth child of African American sharecroppers, but was able to complete her studies. In 1965, after her graduation, she moved to Mississippi and became involved in the civil rights movement. She began her literary career by writing poems, but soon after she was publishing her first collection of short stories. In 1982, she published her most popular novel, “The color purple”, which is an epistolary novel (works of fiction that are written in the form of letters or other documents) that depicts the growing up and self-realization of an African American woman between 1909 and 1947 in a town in Georgia. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg in 1985. “The Color Purple” was praised for the depth of its female characters and for its eloquent use of Black English Vernacular. The story documents the traumas and gradual triumph of Celie as she comes to resist the paralyzing self-concept forced on her by others. Celie narrates her life through painfully honest letters to God. These are prompted when her abusive father, Alphonso, warns her not to tell anybody but God after he rapes her and she becomes pregnant for a second time at the age of 14. This is a story of pain and resilience, which has been inspiring millions of women, especially African Americans, until today.