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Case study: the color purple on the whiteboard.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

The assigned high school reading of Alice Walker's The Color Purple was intended to rectify an imbalance in gendered and raced texts in the curriculum and increase Caucasian awareness of race. But the school administration failed to adequately prepare its predominantly white population and instead reinforced stereotypes about gender, race, and sexuality.

Introduction

This case study reveals what happened when the novel The Color Purple was introduced into high school curriculum to correct gender and racial inequity in school readings. Administrators, well meaning but ill-informed, failed to prepare teachers--and therefore students--for the text's cultural biases. I address The Color Purple's resistance of canonical writing and the need for re-education of readers approaching unfamiliar cultures.

The Problem of the Canon

Dominant reading sources reflect "the canon": Euro-American (Western European or North American) literature, almost always written by men, commonly from an unconsciously privileged and/or colonial perspective. A movement to challenge--or unseat--the canon's dominance resulted in a flurry of sub-literatures by writers labelled "marginal" or "post-colonial," predictably resulting in alternative canons. The concept of "writing back to the Empire" has engendered a sense of Third World writers speaking for themselves, a required step to multi-cultural consciousness.

But alternative canons do not inherently re-condition readers to re-think plot, character, or voice: structuralist textual expectations prevail, readers adhere to canonical criteria structuring comprehension and predicting preference. Marginalized authors have argued that unless readers themselves shift from a "central" point-of-view there can be no conscious engagement with marginal texts. Readers must learn to read and comprehend in a "de-centralized" manner. Thus, non-canonical works necessitate re-contextualization: students must be encouraged to consider the suppressive forces underprivileged authors lace, constructively grapple with ramifications of gender in writing and reading the marginal, and locate themselves within an ongoing academic argument about what constitutes literature and how to read it. Texts introduced to satisfy gender imbalances in education may stir rather than quiet emotions. Not only an issue of male and female sex characteristics or roles, gender is a complex negotiation between individuals and societies, affecting every part of life. In this study issues of race and its gendering, as well as sexual preference, provoked controversy in and out of the classroom.

Role Modelling

In the early 1990s Woods High School added The Color Purple to its curriculum to rectify its balance of gendered and raced texts. Despite its horrible beginning and middle, this novel about two small African-American girls in the 20th century South, separated in childhood, reaches a happy end in two women reuniting. Celie's childhood--based upon Walker's great-great grandmother, whose master raped and impregnated her at age 11--is violently shattered by continuous rapes committed by her father. Pregnancies keep her from school, turning her--briefly--into...

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