Percebendo a cor púrpura do campo: a construção da mulher negra em "A Cor Púrpura", de Alice Walker

Abstract

The present research investigates in the epistolary novel The Color Purple (1982) by the African American author Alice Walker, the different social voices (BAKHTIN, 2015) that construct, throughout the work, the main character and narrator, Celie. To that end, we have covered a path that mainly encompasses the discourses present in the different feminist theories from implicitly white feminism to black feminism and Womanism, the latter, mainly, consisting of theories that use intersectionality (CRENSHAW, 2002; COLLINS, 2016) as an analytical tool. We have analyzed aspects related to gender, race, class and historical context, as well as the characteristics of the discursive genre (BAKHTIN, 2017), linguistic aspects and the color symbology present in the title of the work (HELLER, 2013; GAGE, 2012). We focused on exposing how the path have consolidated the character as a black woman in the post-slavery North American society in which she lives and how her journey towards the feeling of recognition and belonging to such a genre and race takes place. As a theoretical basis for reflection on feminism, black feminism, and womanism we had the thoughts of Virginia Woolf (2013), Rebecca Solnit (2013), Virginie Despentes (2016), Audre Lorde (1998, 2016), bell hooks (2018) and Alice Walker herself (1988) in her essays.