Abstract: Alice Walker is one of the greatest contemporary African American female writers, the first one to utilize the term “womanist”. The Color Purple, an epistolary novel published in 1982, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. From the perspective of womanism, this thesis is to focus on the life and struggle of the protagonist Celie, who has suffered from oppressions of racism and sexism, but ultimately finds her own identity and voice and gains self-recognition and self-consciousness. 

  Key words: womanism; The Color Purple; identity; struggle

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-2

3. Alice Walker’s Womanism: theory-4

3.1 Feminism and Black Feminism-4

3.1.1 Feminist Movement-4

3.1.2 Black Feminist Consciousness-6

3.2 Alice Walker’s Womanism-7

4. Alice Walker’s Womanism in The Color Purple-8

4.1 Celie and Her Womanism-9

4.2 Shug and Her Womanism-13

4.3 Sofia and Her Womanism-15

5. Conclusion-16

References-18