I walked into the session having no insights. Almost no idea what was going on in the book. What the author's intentions were in writing it. You could say I went in blind. Almost unprepared. I don't think I even had taken the time to craft a kick off question like I usually do for one of these sessions.
Part of why I think was I enjoyed reading the book so much. I also sort of read it in two halves. The first part months ago and then when we rescheduled the session I read the rest of it right beforehand.
We kicked off our exploration with the format of the book. All letters. No deviation. It's impressive. It also really captivated me. No slogging. Was this format the reason?
And then the structure. All the letters from the main character are not addressed to the same reader. Just taking the format and that structure based on addressee, the book begins to expand for me the notion of worship. I see in these details, Celie's, the writer of most of the letters in the novel, arc of changing the object of her worship. So few details and still such a rich layer over the book.
I also liked thinking about why letters, why this format? I didn't walk away with any insight here but it's a unique format and a major commitment to not deviate from it.
We did some work on characters and their arcs. In this part of our conversation I was struck by who we felt had strong arcs and who had little to no arc. By this we were meaning who went through some sort of transformation and who didn't or went through a more mild one. This was fascinating. Mostly because I might then say the book is about those who transformed the most rather than any others. And if we said that, we'd have to say some very central characters are not the subject of the book but instead more tangential or serve to show us something about those who do truly transform. Celie and her husband seemed to transform the most while some other characters were more constant, changing little, but meaning the world to Celie.
I always come back to the question “what's the author’s project?” I think of the author sitting down to write a book. And I assume they have a point, a purpose, a mission that's wanting to come in to being through them. By that I mean it is intentional from the outset, that there's a sort of communication burgeoning forth. From author to reader. And if the message isn't an axe to grind from the outset it's more of a hunch. More amorphous maybe not even very conscious.
The book doesn't have an epigraph but it has a postgraph (? Epilogue doesn’t seem to fit here). It's a perfect example of this possible unconscious intention or communication flowing through the author to the reader. “‘I thank everybody in this book for coming.’ A. W. Author and Medium.” Taking this postgraph at face value, the author Alice Walker is simply a journalist telling others' stories objectively. A simple go between not infusing her own interpretation or message through the novel. I assume it's a mix of both in this case and so she must have a project here.
As for what it is, we wondered how accessible it even is to us. A queer author writes a queer love story. If we have not lived the experience of being queer in our society, can we access Walker's message? I assume accessibility is on a spectrum and that we can to some extent but not to the fullest possible extent. The same thinking goes for race and sex. The novel centers black people, specifically women. Any white characters are tangential (aside from maybe one or two).
Assuming we, as not queer and not black and not women, can access Walker's message to some extent, how do we see it? How might we describe her project?
One possible way that I see as overly simple is, as mentioned before, the simple reporting on those who've come before as just a conduit and centering in a love story black, queer, women while doing so. I think there's more to it.
Another possible description of her project is to share her vision of what secular spirituality sans queerphobia, racism, and patriarchy could look like. Or moreso, could feel like. In your body. I say above that Walker's use of letters and addressees shows Celie's transitioning from object of worship to object of worship. I believe she addresses her letters to three different "readers". God, her sister Nettie, and a whole list of people and things.
The "God" she addresses most of her letters to in the earlier part of the book isn't exactly the God of the church and the Bible. I wouldn't say it's a worshipful relationship but there is something of a higher power, omniscient, and relatively caring of Celie.
When she decides to begin addressing her letters to Nettie she says so. “I don’t write to God no more. I write to you.” She says to Nettie that she's the only person who ever loved her. In that whole and complete love Celie returns the favor. Nettie is now the reader. Equivalent or better than God. It makes me wonder, is sisterly love greater than godly love? Is it what's next? It feeds Celie's soul more than any other. Might as well direct all of her heart and words to her sister.
In her last letter, she expands who she writes to to a list of addressees. I won't spoil it because it's beautiful and a lovely moment but it's a reference to earlier in the novel when Shug Avery is telling Celie about her view of God. Now Celie is back to addressing God but after focusing on her sister. And with a wholly different take on God. No longer the all knowing white man in the sky as she describes him to be in that conversation with Shug.
Alice Walker need not just have one streamlined point to this beautiful work of art. She could just be a medium. She could be working on centering black queer women’s love stories. She could also be sharing a most expansive view of God while she's at it.
Podcast (Coming soon)
Workshops (Coming soon)
Reach out to me just for fun! - tommy@extragrad.com