The Color Purple
The publication of The Color Purple transformed Alice Walker from an indu- bitably serious black writer whose fiction belonged to a tradition of gritty, if occasionally "magical," realism into a popular novelist, with all the perquisites and drawbacks attendant on that position.
Unlike either The Third Life of Grange Copland (1970) or Meridian (1976), The Color Purple gained imme- diate and widespread public acceptance, winning both the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for 1982-83. At the same time, however, it generated immediate and widespread critical unease over what appeared to be manifest flaws in its composition.
