Summary Of The Color Purple By Patricia Hill Collins

Patricia Hill Collins explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals, as well as those African-American women outside. She provides the work of Black feminist thinkers, Angela Davis who was an American political activist, Alice Walker who wrote the book “The Colour Purple,” and Audre Lorde an American writer and civil rights activist. Although the book focused on the black feminist thought of intellectuals and activists, the author believed, that those experiences and perspectives of black women would serve as a lens for understanding systems of oppression. In the first chapter “The Politics of Black Feminist Thought,” the author discusses how Black women’s ideas and existence have been excluded, which is why Collins introduces
The author demonstrates this by her theory on “intersectionality,” which is an analysis claiming that “systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation and age form mutually constructing features of social organization.” This has continued to shape Black women's experiences and, in turn, has been shaped by Black women. The author shares her own experience of being tokenized and suppressed by her very scarcity. At the beginning of her adolescent years, Collins said “I was increasingly the "first," "one of the few," or the "only" African American and/or woman and/or working-class person in my schools, communities, and work settings. I saw nothing wrong with being who I was, but apparently many others did. As the world grew larger, I felt I was growing smaller. I tried to disappear into myself to deflect the painful, daily assaults designed to teach me that being an African American, working-class woman made me lesser than those who were not. And as I felt smaller, I became quieter and eventually I was virtually