Growing into 'The Color Purple'
Ellen Lynette Williams
Growing up, no single movie had more of an impact on me then The Color Purple (TCP) by Steven Spielberg. I was eight when I first saw it with my mother on VHS (after an instance with Flashdance, my mother became pretty liberal with the movies I could watch).
As a Caucasian woman raising a Bi-Racial child, my mother strived to ensure I understood what it meant to be Black in America. With the recent protest of the death of George Floyd and America’s outrage at the systemic racism, I needed an outlet to cry and grieve. Feeling frustrated at the responses to the protest from people I considered friends, I needed a way to process that felt comfortable and normal.
So, the other night I re-watched TCP for the uncountable time (I can recite every word from memory), and started my healing process. Though something was different in this viewing. A change in me that I never expected. The actualization that I have grown through each female character in the movie to become the woman I am today.
When I was younger, if you asked which character in TCP I saw myself in, I would have, in an instant, said Celie. Though I was an outspoken girl, and relatively happy in my youth, I never felt seen or heard. While my mother would only spank me in extreme cases, my grandmother was of a different generation. Her self-loathing for the life she was leading would turn into utter frustration and violence. I would find myself trying to keep the peace to avoid getting dishes being thrown or getting slapped in the face.
Dimming my light to ensure my safety, was a means for survival. In middle school, I had one friend that was my Nettie to my Celie. Her strength helped me to find my voice and transition into my own Nettie in high school.
In high school, I quickly learned how to defend myself from the whims of my grandmother. As her alcoholism took control of her health, and my hormones took control of my moods, we came to an understanding that worked best for the family, I would yell and leave the room, and she would drink into an incoherent stupor. Once a family routine was found, a fight for a presence to be seen with the Black students began. My high school was a suburban, racial hell, with fights breaking out weekly due to some racial slur or another.
As a light-skinned Black woman or high yellow as some liked to call me, I had to use my wits like Nettie to assert my place as a Black woman. In meetings of the cultural committee, my fellow Black students would tell me I didn’t understand what they were going through because I could pass (as white). I would explain that I was being called nigger just the same as them, but now I was getting called cracker by them. I decided like Nettie to run and try and find a better life in college.
That better life was Shug Avery. Miss Shug Avery with her sexy songs and reputation captivating the hearts of young men across the south, but that was not me. Awkward in my sexuality trying to find my way as I realized in college that I was now a bisexual woman of color. I did what Shug did, drowned my sorrows in gin. My mother didn’t accept my sexuality, calling it a phase, and not wanting to disappoint her, I tended to avoid that topic. The college I had chosen was predominantly white, as I felt safest with white people.
However, I learned quickly, that my college wasn’t necessarily a safe place. It was rumored that President of the college, at the time, had said to the board of trustees, that he wanted the college to “look like Bryers vanilla ice cream, white with like black specs.” This was followed by the addition of Tommy Hilfiger to our Board of Trustees, right after his rumored comments about how if he knew “black people were going to buy his clothes, he would not have made them.” This has since been proven to be a false statement, but at the time it was believed true.
I understood that Shug’s sadness came from the constraints that her family, and Misters family, put on her. The idea that she wanted to be something greater than a mother and housewife, but society didn’t agree. Never able to be her true self. I lead my life as Shug for many years hiding behind a face of happiness, and drowning when alone.
After college, I married a man that I shouldn’t have married. While there was love and friendship in that relationship, I married because that was what was expected of me. We divorced, after only a few years of marriage, and remained friends. I dated a series of people, not finding true happiness because I couldn’t be my true self. Just as Shug sings her way back into the church, and the arms of her father, I had to find my strength. The catalyst for my transformation was being fired from a telecommunication company, after working there for nine years. It was traumatic and core shaking, similar to Shug’s “disease” that Celie and Mister help her heal from. It was an event that told me it was time for me to find my voice, and passion, and not give it up ever again. I went back to school.
At a Catholic college, I found Judaism. I found a community of people who accepted me as I am. I found a way to communicate my true self to my mother. That’s when it happened. I was no longer Shug. I had finally ascended to Sophia.
“Sophia, Sophia, Sophia, that sure is a pretty name.” Of all the women in TCP, Miss Sophia has to be the most self-actualized character of them all. From the start, she is a pure force to be reckoned with. I didn’t understand, as a child, Sophia’s true strength. I knew she was a fighter, but to be as emblazon as she is, you must have passion as well as fight. My passion is helping people, and my fight is to stop injustice. As I watched TCP, and thought on current events, I’m reminded of Sophia’s famous speech “You told Harpo to beat me. You told Harpo to beat me. All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my uncles. I had to fight my brothers… but I ain’t never thought I’d have to fight in my own house.”
Right now, I am Sophia, and America is Sophia. We have had to fight in our schools, our neighborhoods, our police, but we never thought we would have to fight our country as Trump calls for American troops to police protests. Miss Sophia has had some ups and downs; in the end, she is standing with her husband by her side. America too has had its ups and down; in the end, she too will be standing with her Black citizens by her side. It’s going to be a long, hard, fraught road.
As I watched TCP, I saw myself marching down the road to confront Celie. This walk is me trying to educate the people that don’t understand why the protests are happening. I saw myself get cold-cocked with a pistol after refusing to become a white woman’s maid, by a police officer, sworn to protect me. That’s the pain, anger, sorrow, and fear I feel when I walk out of the house. I saw myself reduced to a shell of a person because the system has gotten the better of me. That’s the urge to shut down as things escalate and chaos ensues.
I see myself, when I wake up and realize that I’m home and I’m not alone, and that I have a voice. That’s me shouting that I am a proud, successful, light skin, Bi-Sexual, Jewish, Black Woman, and I’m going to FIGHT for my voice to be heard. That’s what growing into The Color Purple is.