The Author's Perspective

Alice Walker and August Wilson have many things in common; they

both are amazing authors of color, have won multiple awards for their pieces, and most importantly both use their platforms and pieces to have many important conversations about racial issues in America. Walker wrote the novel, The Color Purple, as a series of letters to God from an African American woman named Celie, as well as letters to Celie from her sister Nettie. The novel goes through most of Celie’s young to adult life, and displays the struggles she faces as a black woman in America in the early to mid 1900s. With Alice Walker growing up at the latter end of that time period, she faced many of the same struggles that Celie did, as stereotypes have carried through all generations. Since Walker has and still does experience the effects of racism and stereotypes, she exhibits and displays

her own emotions and situations through the character of Celie. While Fences shares the common theme of race, it is shown in a completely different way, which reflects the experiences of African Americans in this country since no one’s experiences are the same. Fences is written about the Maxsons - an African American family in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. The piece details the family’s relationships and societal struggles, something Wilson commonly likes to explore in his pieces. The ways in which each character interacts with the overarching theme of race greatly differ from those in The Color Purple, yet have some similarities. While the theme of race is prominently explored in both The Color Purple and Fences, authors Alice Walker and August Wilson’s own experiences, perspectives, and writing styles cause the theme to manifest itself in different lights through character relationships and overall actions.

As previously stated, The Color Purple takes place in an unspecified time, approximated to be between the 1910s and 1940s, and Fences takes place throughout the 1950s. The possibility to be around forty years apart holds reason for the very close similarities in addition to the large differences in the way society treats the characters in both pieces. The Color Purple takes place in Georgia where “Jim Crow laws”, that held the phrase “separate but equal”, were being implemented. These laws impacted essentially every aspect of life for those in the south, impacting “education, religion, public transportation, and the use of other public and private facilities including bathrooms and restaurants” (Hacht). Celie is a direct victim of this segregation and lack of opportunities, and it’s prevalently shown in her lack of education. Being a lower class black female in the early 1900s, Celie was not given the opportunity to get an education. This is directly shown when her younger sister attempts to tutor her, and indirectly through the writing style of the whole novel. Since the majority of the novel was written as letters from Celie to God, her lack of education is shown through her spelling, grammar, and overall ignorance about many things. Celie explicitly expresses her desire for an education, but given her family situation and the “hindrance” of just her skin color, she was unable to receive one. In this time period, there was also “"the imposition of a legal color line in race relations, and a variety of laws that blatantly discriminated against blacks" (Hacht), which is also directly represented in The Color Purple with the character Sofia. Sofia received a heavy sentencing for simply “insulting” a white woman by just verbally refusing to be her maid. To make matters even worse, after that encounter she was attacked by a white mob and put in jail. This has two connections to the theme of racial discrimination: Sofia never would have received this type of treatment or attack if she was a white woman in the same position, and since she was a black woman she was assumed to just be a houseworker for anyone to take up. In this time period as well, African Americans were greatly restricted economically, allowing for very little to no mobility. They were “relegated to mostly lower- and working-class jobs like sharecropping” (Hacht), which is exhibited with Celie’s husband Albert who is stuck working a farming job, as well as others mentioned in the novel. Similarly to how Sofia was treated, racist white angry lynch mobs would form to create some sort of “penalty”  for violating any of these laws that hindered blacks in America. Celie’s own biological father found his death as a result of situations like that as he was killed due to establishing a business that competed with white ones. The relationships between African American men and women also were greatly impacted by the white male dominated society around them. In “white society”, men traditionally held control of the family and were seen as superior to women. This mindset also made its way into African American culture in the United States, but in frustration at being shamed by the color of their skin, black men turned their anger towards women. This occurred to bring some feelings of power back to the men, which in turn led to physically and emotionally abusive relationships, as well as double the oppression towards black women. 

August Wilson, the author of Fences, faced racism throughout his entire life. In his childhood, one thing that brought him comfort was reading, and the idea that black men and women could write such successful and amazing pieces greatly inspired him. Rather than write in a bitter tone about the many terrible instances Wilson experienced throughout his life, he wanted to “explore his community's culture and do something for his people” (Shafer). Something that is a prevalent theme in many of his pieces is that Wilson likes to inform his audiences about the cruelties African Americans have been facing as long as this country has been around through the perspectives of African Americans. His own experiences are also shown in Fences as Wilson was born in 1945 and grew up in Pittsburgh where the play is supposedly set in. Furthermore, in Fences the use of writing in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) perfectly displays the genuine and authentic lifestyles. Throughout history, AAVE has been thought of as an unprofessional or grammatically incorrect version of regular English, however it is a valid branch of English that is recognized as a language. Ergo Wilson’s use of it in his work is very meaningful as it shows the validity and normalcy of AAVE. In regard to the location that Fences takes place in, it historically makes a lot of sense why Troy would have moved his family to a northern urban city. In the early 1900s, “economic opportunities in cities of the industrial North encouraged many blacks to leave the South” (Napierkowski). This serves as well as a reason why Albert from The Color Purple, and Troy from Fences have very different occupations and living situations. Since the Maxson family lives in an urban city, the industrialization that comes with that type of community also gave opportunities for jobs that were not available, especially for African Americans, in the southern United States. This escape from economic inequalities as a result of racial discrimination is greatly explored in Fences, and a bit in The Color Purple. 

In The Color Purple, women are depicted as only being able to work as housewives with their sole purpose being to have children and serve their husbands’ every demand. Celie is seen her entire life as just someone to do exactly what her husband says, and without doing so, she would be beaten. Going back to what was stated about history in this time period, abuse among African American relationships was sadly very common. This is frequently shown throughout the whole novel through Celie’s familial relationships with her “father” and her husband. The occurrence of this was so common in Celie’s life that she thought it was just what made a marriage work. She even went so far to the point that she told her step son, Harpo, to begin beating his wife, Sofia, because she was too independent. Sofia is also another example of the work that was expected of black women. An entitled white woman, the mayor’s wife, decided that just because Sofia was a black woman that she had to be available to work for her. When Sofia refused, conflict arose which as I previously stated landed her in jail. Even after all of that, the only way Sofia could live out of jail was to work as a housekeeper for the mayor, and she even ended up as a surrogate to the mayor’s wife. To these people, Sofia was just an object and a worker to them, not another equal human. The only time women are not seen as such is when they are working a performative job which is very difficult to succeed without “looks”. In addition to the beauty standards that at this time (and all points in history) set impossible expectations on women, black women at this time were made to believe that the darkness of their skin, the amount of melanin in their skin, would make them “less beautiful” or “less desirable”. While this may seem completely crazy (because it is), this was a very true reality for Celie. She saw herself as ugly for having darker toned skin, and never thought of herself as a desirable choice for someone to love or marry. 

For Celie’s sister, Nettie, blatant racism is exhibited. The African village that Nettie and the family she was working for were missionaries at was simultaneously being taken over by British builders for a rubber business, and the natives’ land was being torn apart by them. Even on their own land and in their own communities that had been established for as long as they had knowledge of,  the builders referred to the villagers as “backward natives”. At the village, the Africans refused to acknowledge their own “partial responsibility for the slave trade”, and ironically Nettie then begins to view the Africans as just as self centered as white Americans. At the end of the novel once Nettie returns to Georgia, her family and Celie’s family are able to reunite and have a meal together. While this may seem like an ordinary action for white families, this wasn’t as easily possible for black families whose lives had been ripped apart by poverty and the legacy of slavery. 

Another large aspect of Celie’s character is her spirituality and relationship with God. As her confidant in these letters, Celie trusts the God she believes in, or at least she did until she began to reflect on his physical features. Upon realizing that western society tends to describe God as a white male, Celie then started to think of him as just another white man holding control over her life. This struggle with identification displayed the strong hold that white influence as a whole had over Celie. Luckily, upon reflecting and talking with her sister and Shug, she began to realize that what she was being told to believe didn’t necessarily have to be the truth. She realized that God wasn’t white or black, male or female, just simply someone she believed in as a result of her faith which in her eyes would never leave her. As she opened up to God as a more complex concept and not a specific being, Celie wrote in her letters “Dear God. Dear stars, dear trees, dear sky, dear peoples. Dear Everything. Dear God” (Walker 283). At this point, it implicitly shows Celie’s acknowledgement and rejection of the myths forced upon her by the “powerful” white society around her. 

The racial struggles that the main character of Fences, Troy, faces carry throughout his entire life, and actively affect his familial relationships. In Troy’s youth, he was faced with abuse at the hands of his father that luckily didn’t carry through to his own children or wife, unlike The Color Purple. However, Troy was hindered by the segregation and discrimination that was in professional sports in the early 1900s which impacted much of his decision making in regard to his son, Cory. As a talented baseball player, Troy was unable to play in the MLB, and was only allowed to play in the Negro league. Troy held this mindset of not being able to succeed (monetarily as well) by following your dreams due to society’s discrimination over Cory. Now in the mid 1900s, after Jackie Robinson broke the boundaries for what African American professional sports players could and couldn’t do, Cory was presented the opportunity to play football in college. Even with that, black professional sports players did not get as much money or playing time, but still progress was progress in Cory’s eyes. Still with his old mindset, Troy didn’t see Cory playing professional football as an actual career opportunity, and thought in this survivalist and logistic way as a result of the hardships and hindrances he personally faced in regard to racism in professional sports. 

Later in his adult life, Troy also faced racial issues surrounding his occupation. As a waste management professional, there was some discrimination in regard to who was allowed to do what job. Only the white men were allowed to be the drivers of the garbage trucks, leaving the African American men to do all the dirty and physically strenuous work for a lesser pay. Although, with a filed complaint and some fighting, Troy was able to receive a promotion to drive the garbage trucks. The later time period, in comparison to The Color Purple, shows the progress that had been made from the early to mid 1900s. However, even with “progress”, things were not even close to equal or equitable for African Americans. Even being in a northern urban city like Pittsburgh, jobs and job opportunities were not equal by any means. This is explicitly stated by Troy in the play where he says “Got up here and found out . . . not only couldn’t you get a job . . . you couldn’t find no place to live. I thought I was in freedom. Shhh. Colored folks living down there on the riverbanks in whatever kind of shelter they could find for themselves” (Wilson). In comparison to the south where Celie and  her husband Albert lived in The Color Purple, there were theoretically more job opportunities with the large amounts of industrialization, but the discrimination and racism was still the same and was prevalent across the country through both pieces’ time periods. For African Americans, the “city rejected them”, and they were rejected from housing opportunities and factory jobs. As a result, many African Americans had to resort to labor intensive jobs that made less money and took a greater physical toll on them. With this very minimal amount of income, many turned to crime, like Troy did in his youth that landed him imprisoned. As a black man, especially in low income, Troy believed that he was born with “strikes” against himself that without, he would have had a better opportunity to “hit a home run” with his life. 

Lastly, in the 1950s, “women were restrained by traditional roles and the division of private and public spheres” (Metzger), which is greatly shown through the character Rose. Rose is shown as a housewife that had to settle and sacrifice her life aspirations for her husband, Troy, and was left with the sole responsibility to mother Troy’s children whether they were also her children or not. Her situation is extremely similar to Celie’s in The Color Purple. Celie was in a “relationship” with her husband and was forced to settle and only act as a housewife for her husband and a caretaker for his children who were not even her own. The key difference between these two women however was that Rose somewhat chose to live this way out of love for Troy, whereas Celie was forced to do this. 

All in all, the time periods of the pieces, the backgrounds and genders of the authors, and the overall perspectives that the pieces were written through caused the theme of race to manifest itself in similar yet very different ways in The Color Purple and Fences. Due to the shared theme, the pieces discussed the same issues, but the settings and specific time periods of the pieces caused the issues to impact the characters and their relationships and actions in completely different means. Both pieces utilize and explore very important themes that I am glad I had the opportunities to read about. By furthering research to the background of the authors and historical context of the pieces’ settings, the missing puzzle pieces really fell into place in my mind.