The Color Purple

by Alice Walker
p 290

Rarely a book and movie coincide so deeply that they become one, but in the case of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" I cannot separate the two. Having seen the movie first, I naturally gravitated to the movie characters when I first picked up the book. The casting seemed too perfect not to seamlessly input their faces onto the written page. Yet with all good literature, only Walker's beautiful and at times poetic words can bring them to life.
As a Book Club choice, I was not sure I was ready to re-read this book - mostly because I had just read it in the last few years. Yet with each reading or watching of the movie, I glean a little more from the characters and the heartbreak and joy they experience. The relationship between Shug, Celie and Mister is at the core of this story, and with this reading I found myself focusing on how their love for each other somehow overcomes all the hurt and pain they brought to one another.
This redemptive quality resonated throughout the book. The story deals with the difficulties of black Americans in the 1930's, particularly black women. Celie's story is written in letter form first to God, then to her sister Nettie. This personal approach gives her the opportunity
to try to explain, if not make sense of her world. She is an uneducated, poor, abused black woman in the south, yet Walker creates within her letters a full and glorious story of hope.
This book is easily one of my all -time favorites. If you haven't picked it up, do it - then watch the movie.
Rock, Chalk, Jay, Hawk x 100!!!!

Crooker Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

"Larry lay thinking of Silas, how time packs new years over the old ones but how those old years are still in there, like the earliest, tightest rings centering a tree, the most hidden, enclosed in darkness and shielded from weather. But then a saw screams in and the tree topples and the circles are stricken by the sun and the sap glistens and the stump is laid open for the world to see."

Larry and Silas grew up as secret friends in the small town of Chabot Mississippi. Larry the son of a poor white family, Silas or "32" the son of a single black woman who lived on the property of Larry's family. Their friendship is split apart by a racial slur and Silas goes on to be a popular, accomplished student who goes off to college. When the girl of Larry's dreams doesn't ever return from their first date, Larry is quickly labeled a murderer and is ostracized by the community-even with no proof he committed any crime. When a second girl disappears years later Larry is again under scrutiny and Silas has returned home as an officer of the law to investigate.

This novel is positively dripping in Southern literary style. Listen to the languid rhythms and cadences of the poor and rural south as you read. While it is a thriller the setting and the sad and dark tone force the reader to slow down as to take it all in. The characters of Larry and Silas are well-developed and flashbacks between the present and the past provide an intimate, visceral portrait into the mysteries of friendship, hope and redemption. I couldn't put it down. 2010, 272 pages.