I read it because it was on my mental must-read list. Of course, being so young, I did not really appreciate the profound subtleties that these authors wove through their texts. Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Maya Angelou, Ntozake Shange, Langston Hughes, and Nikki Giovanni were some of my early favorites. Around ninth grade, I decided to concentrate on reading as many books by African American authors as I could. Since my love of books began at an early age (in elementary school I was given special permission for an increased weekly book allowance from the school librarian), by middle school, I had long outgrown books for kids my age and had worked through a fair amount of adult mysteries, romance novels, and classic fiction. Only ten years old when the book debuted twenty-five years ago, I first read it during high school. The perfect spot for the built-in bookshelves to house the library that I had been collecting since graduating from college.Īs it turns out, one of the first books that I bought for my collection was Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. I love books so much that when my husband and I were house-hunting seven years ago, there was one feature about our house that sealed the deal for me-the twenty-foot span of blank wall, unobstructed by windows and doors, in the bonus room upstairs. But three specially ordered books arrived on my doorstep just today. It has been three years since I bought shoes.

I buy books like many women buy clothes-impulsively, compulsively, and sometimes secretly. And there is no coffee to account for the rush of ecstasy that I get when I cross the threshold of my local library.

After all, when I walk into Barnes and Noble and pause to take a deep breath, it is not the scent of coffee that tickles my brain. One with a good coffee bar would be nice, but not necessary. In fact, if I were forced to spend the remainder of my life in a single location, I would hope that it would be a bookstore or a library. Editor’s Note: In 1983 Alice Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for The Color Purple.

Author the color purple