I write to express my gratitude.
You bore shame. You experienced oppression, violence, degradation, and suffering. You wrestled with jealousy. You wrestled with comparison. You wrestled with understanding, worthiness, womanhood, sexuality, and even God.
Your life told from your point-of-view resonates with this poor, black, maybe ugly, still here woman. You see and validate me. Like Sofia, I know there's a God because of you.
You affirm that I am neither alone nor hopeless. I can be the redeemer of my story. You prove that sisterhood strengthens. I adore you for this. I love you for existing.
You, dearest Miss Celie, are a master class in surviving and thriving in spite of unnecessary insults.
Amen. 💜
If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Miss Celie's Wisdom & Understanding:
But I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.
He look at me. It like he looking at the earth. It need somethin? his eyes say.
Anyhow, I say, the God I been praying and writing to is a man. And act just like all the other mens I know. Trifling, forgitful and lowdown. She say, Miss Celie, You better hush. God might hear you. Let ’im hear me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.
All my life I never care what people thought bout nothing I did, I say. But deep in my heart I care about God. What he going to think. And come to find out, he don’t think. Just sit up there glorying in being deef, I reckon. But it ain’t easy, trying to do without God. Even if you know he ain’t there, trying to do without him is a strain.
But this hard work, let me tell you. He been there so long, he don’t want to budge. He threaten lightening, floods and earthquakes. Us fight. I hardly pray at all. Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it. Amen.
One look at this big stout graying, wildeyed woman and you know not even to ast. Nothing.
I’m pore, I’m black, I may be ugly and can’t cook, a voice say to everything listening. But I’m here.
She got a right to look over the world in whatever company she choose. Just cause I love her don’t take away none of her rights.
- Alice Walker | The Color Purple
