Salamishah Tillet combines cultural criticism, history, and memoir to explore Alice Walker’s epistolary novel The Color Purple.

About this Event

Published in 1982, the ground breaking novel The Color Purple by Alice Walker went on to win the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The story's portrayal of African American women living in rural Georgia in the early twentieth century sparked celebratory and contentious conversations around race and gender, that still continue today.

In the latest work by scholar, cultural critic and activist Salamishah Tillet, In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece examines the novel through archival research, interviews and personal experiences. Join us for the launch event with Salamishah Tillet and contributors to the book Dr. Beverly Guy- Sheftall and Gloria Steinem, moderated by Rebecca Carroll.

This program will be streamed on Zoom. Please check your email shortly before the discussion to receive the link.

GET THE BOOK | Readers everywhere who wish to pre-order the book can do so online at The Schomburg Shop. All proceeds benefit The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Salamishah Tillet is a scholar, cultural critic, and activist. Previously a professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Tillet was also a visiting fellow at Princeton and scholar-in-residence at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center. She is currently the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark, the faculty director of New Arts Justice at Express Newark, and a contributing critic-at-large at the New York Times. With her sister, Scheherazade Tillet, she founded A Long Walk Home, an art organization that empowers young people to end violence against girls and women.