Charles R. Johnson - Controversy Over The Color Purple

Controversy Over The Color Purple

In the updated 1995 introduction to his novel Oxherding Tale, Johnson engendered a political firestorm when he seemed to criticize Alice Walker's The Color Purple for its negative portrayal of African-American males. Quoth Johnson: "I leave it to readers to decide which book pushes harder at the boundaries of convention, and inhabits most confidently the space where fiction and philosophy meet."

In a 2007 interview, Johnson described the controversy this way:

"I’ve met Alice Walker. We met in the ‘70s at a New York book party for her novel Meridian. While I have artistic and intellectual problems with The Color Purple, I think the author is addressing a legitimate problem: namely, the pain many black women have felt, historically, from not being able to rely on their men being men (reliable, supportive, there to help raise the babies they make) in a society and culture that since the 17th century has tried to emasculate black men. (See my discussion of her novel in Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970). Walker has never said anything to me about that statement in the preface to Oxherding Tale. But there are, I know, some black (and white) feminists who probably hate me, but that’s their problem, not mine. (As a buddy of mine always says, “Hate kills its host first.”)"