Short Blog #6

I found the format of The Color Purple interesting. By breaking the story up into ninety-one letters, Alice Walker is able to write from the perspective of Celie, conveying events in a retrospective sense while also making the emotion feel more raw and genuine. She writes at first to God and later to her sister Nettie as she finally is able to connect to people who support her. This format reminded me of Between the World and Me by Ta-nehisi Coates which we read last year. In Between the World and Me, Coates writes to his son, warning him of the dangers he may encounter as he grows up. While the format is similar, the content is almost opposite. Coates stresses future danger while, in The Color Purple, Celie is revealing the horrors she had already encountered. This distinction between a cry for help and a bunch of warnings/lessons is a major distinction between the two works. It just interested me as this format of letter based storytelling is fairly unique and Coates and Walker both used this format in completely different ways.