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• Q & A with Ms. Walker
• The Color Purple on Broadway
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Tavis: I'm pleased to welcome Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Alice Walker to this program. Her most famous book 'The Color Purple' is coming to Broadway in the form of a new musical produced by people like Quincy Jones and Oprah Winfrey. Previews began earlier tonight at the Broadway Theater in New York. Opening night for the general public is December 1st. Her latest book is 'Now is the Time to Open Your Heart,' out earlier this year in paperback. Alice Walker, nice to have you on the program.

Alice Walker: I'm very happy to be here.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you here. I had just gotten to - just arrived in Los Angeles when 'The Color Purple,' just been here for a minute really when 'The Color Purple' first came out. And you won't remember this, and I don't expect you to, but I was at the premiere that night and I got you to sign my 'Color Purple' ticket.

Walker: Really?

Tavis: And I have it framed on the wall in my house. When you walk in my house, one of the first things you see is an autographed ticket of, I should have brought it to show you tonight, not that you care, but anyway.

Walker: I wish you had. I do.

Tavis: I seeyour autograph on my picture on my wall every day at my house; so it's nice to have you on the program.

Walker: Thank you.

Tavis: When I said a moment ago that 'The Color Purple' is your most famous book, one, I assume you agree with that. But number two, I wonder if that's okay with you, given all that you've done. Is it okay? I mean, I know you love the success of it, but is it okay that people think of 'The Color Purple' as your best work?

Walker: It was especially written for them, so it's fine for them to want to think of that book. It's not necessarily my favorite of my books. The book that came after it is I think my favorite.

Tavis: For those who don't know the book that came after that?

Walker: 'The Temple of My Familiar.'

Tavis: Why is that one your favorite?

Walker: Well, because the first one, 'The Color Purple', which actually was my third novel, is the novel that I dealt with my grandparents and my parents, and the generations before me. But in 'The Temple of My Familiar', I deal more with my own time, and it's just a more complicated and complex story. It took me two years to write it, and Ijust love it more.

Tavis: I wonder whether or not you think that that may be one of the reasons why it was not received in the way 'The Color Purple' was, because it was more complicated and more complex. I raise that not to cast aspersion on your work, but only because oftentimes it's difficult for people to really appreciate works that appear to be complicated, complex.

I mean, I love Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate. You got to read her stuff, though, sometimes a couple of times 'cause she puts so much good stuff in it, you gotta read it two or three times to get it. I read it 10 years later and still see something in 'Sula' that I didn't see the first time. I wonder whether or not you think, though, that the complexity of it makes it difficult for certain readers to grasp?

Walker: Maybe. But I'm always happy to meet the people who get it, and there are many of those. And I feel a special affinity with them, actually. I feel that we are a kind of tribe who understands something, you know, that is unique.

Tavis: What do you think people missed most that they could've benefited from, from this book?

Walker: From 'The Color Purple'?

Tavis: No.

Walker: Oh, from 'The Temple of My Familiar?' Well, just that we've all been on the planet a very, very long time, and in many different forms, and that we have been relating with each other in many different ways, and that all of these ways are possible. And that we can always improve upon the ways that we are relating, you know, day-to-day. It's a very, you know, it's a hard question that you're asking me because it's such a big book.

Tavis: Well, I ask you only because I figure people are watching, and if they have a better idea of what they missed by not reading 'The Temple of My Familiar', they may go and pick it up. That's my attempt to try and sell some more books, but I'll leave that alone. Okay. Let me back up to book number three, 'The Color Purple', the one that the play is being made from on Broadway.

What did you make of the fact that on your third novel you, pardon the phrase, struck gold? I mean, there are people who write books for a lifetime and never have happen for their work, which doesn't diminish the work in any way, but here you are on your third novel and you struck pay dirt on this thing.

Walker: It was quite wonderful. The Pulitzer; the movie. I enjoyed all of it. And I also suffered a lot, because, as you know, there was a great deal of criticism. But in the end, the criticism actually strengthened me. Because I realized that, well, this is just obviously the kind of artist that I am. You know, in the same way that a pine tree is the tree that it is, and there's nothing much that can change that. So I survived it. And so it was good.

Tavis: When you mentioned the criticism, you just took me back, you just transported me back years, years. I started our conversation by telling you about this ticket that I had to the premiere that you autographed that I have framed on my wall. And when you mentioned the criticism and the controversy, I justwent back real fast, because I recall -tell me if you remember the same way I remember it -I recall that, and - I'm not trying to cast aspersions on people.

But I recall that there was a group of black folk here in town, here in L.A., who went after you and 'The Color Purple' for its depiction, specifically of African American men. They didn't like the way you depicted black men in 'The Color Purple', and they went after you. As I also recall, those same people a year later were raising hell when the Academy didn't honor 'The Color Purple' the way they thought it should've been honored, because it was black-themed. Do you recall that?

Walker: Oh, I recall it very well. And also...

Tavis: Am I right? Did I remember that correctly?

Walker: Oh, yes. And there was a picket line, you know, around the theater. Yes.

Tavis: Exactly. What did you make of that? That these same people were criticizing, first of all, there are at least three or four questions on that. Let me break this down. What, first of all, did you make of the fact that black people, certain black people, were criticizing the project for its depiction of black men? Let's start with that first.

Walker: Well, they also said they hadn't read the book. And they said they didn't plan to see the film. So I thought that their criticism was bogus. And therefore it didn't hurt as much as it might have.

Tavis: Had they read it and then still had that same criticism.

Walker: Yes. Because there are wonderful men in 'The Color Purple'.

Tavis: That's what I want to ask you. So let's assume that they had read the book and still had the same criticism. They read the book, saw the movie, and still had a picket line. What would your response have been to the way they thought you treated or maltreated these black male characters?

Walker: Well, I think they would've seen that the characters, the male characters as well as the female characters, you know, were just people. And they develop, they grow, they change, they transform. And I just don't think they would've had the same kind of response.

Tavis: Critically acclaimed, no doubt about it. Saying nothing of the fact that it's Oprah's first movie. You got Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg - it doesn't get much better than that in this business - who were behind putting the project together. And yet, a year later, the Academy did not honor this project in the way that it could with nominations, etcetera, etcetera. What did you make of that, if anything, looking back on it?

Walker: They had no courage.

Tavis: No courage?

Walker: They had no courage. And it was okay. It was okay with me, because I didn't know those people. And sometimes when we are awarded stuff by people, you know, that we don't know, it's meaningless anyway. So I was very okay with it.

Tavis: Courage. You're the deep thinker here, not me, but just in a prima facie sort of way, courage is the antithesis of fear. So if you thought that they had no courage in honoring the project, what were they afraid of?

Walker: I think that they had been very much scared by the black men who were angry. They didn't want to further offend by appearing to praise something that so many black people seemed to dislike. However, if they had actually looked at the beautiful work of the film and seen the art, and really felt free about what art is, they would've given it the awards that it deserved.

Tavis: Let me try to put two thoughts here together that are, at a glance, perhaps disjointed. ButI think you'll understand what I'm trying to say here. I was - earlier - what's today? Tuesday. Earlier this week, Sunday, I was honored to speak at the funeral for Mrs. Parks. You know, three-day service, first in Montgomery, then in DC, and in Detroit tomorrow. I spoke at her service in Montgomery. And I was seated right near Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who also spoke on the program.

And there were a number of persons who went to the podium that day. And one can have one's own opinions on whether or not that was the appropriate place for it or not. But there were a lot of people who weren't gonna miss the opportunity to say something to George Bush through the Secretary of State about the Voting Rights Act and other political issues with Condoleezza Rice sitting on the front row. You got Condoleezza Rice captive for three hours in a service; you say what you want to say to her, especially with TV cameras. This is your moment. I had issues with that, but a lot of peopletook that opportunity to make their point.

Now, I raise that because I sat there looking at Condoleezza Rice in that service, and I was wondering how it felt for Condi to be in a room, church full of black people, and have a significant number of them go after her, her own people, African American people, go after her about her politics. Now, again, - that's a whole other show on its own. I raise that only because I wondered then how it felt for you, whether the Academy awarded it or not, to have a significant number of black people who did have a problem with that project, given what you were trying to do with it. Did that bother you?

Walker: Well, it was okay in a way because they were wrong.

Tavis: (laughs) So, is that what Condoleezza Rice was thinking, "These people are wrong, and it's okay with me?'

Walker: I'm not Condoleezza Rice.

Tavis: No, I'm just teasing. I know, okay.

Walker: And I really don't appreciate that comparison, actually. I find it very objectionable, because she is someone who has helped the President actually bomb people, you know, kill people, starve people, you know, enforced sanctions against Cuba, for instance, to hurt many of the people that I deeply love. So this is very different from just writing a novel that is made into a film that people say they've never even watched, and they've never read the book. So the people have been, you know, very untruthful, about how they actually perceive the work.

Tavis:Two things. First of all, I didn't mean to offend you by that - and the point was not to compare you and Dr. Rice. The point was about what it feels like to be an African American, to have your work, whatever it might be, criticized by other African Americans. So I apologize if I offended you. That was not the point. The comparison again was being criticized by the African American people.

To that point, and that said, there were African American people, this movie was very controversial, so everybody, Ms. Walker, who criticized it was not somebody who didn't see it, and who didn't read it. So that's not fair either.

Walker: Well, okay, so I think many people were very upset about the lesbianism.

Tavis: Okay, that's what I'm trying to get to.

Walker: They really didn't like the idea that women could be perfectly okay without men. They didn't like the idea that the men in the story became the kind of men who could actually talk to women as equals, who could sit on the porch and sew and really have a wonderful time. Mister asks Celie, you know, at the end of the story, to marry him again. This is something that I think most men, most black men, apparently, the ones who were complaining, just could not imagine.

They could not imagine this kind of behavior. Now, the question we need to ask is why? Why can't they imagine men who can sit and talk with women on an equal basis? Why is this so difficult? Why do people have to be macho? Why do men feel they have to be swinging on a rope and crashing through your bedroom window with a gun in one hand and a blonde on the other arm to actually be manly? Why do people think that way?

So I understood that they were trying to deal with my work, in a way, to suppress it, you know, to keep down not only uppity women, but also men who were capable of changing, and who were sick of being macho. I mean, it's so boring. It's so tiring.

Tavis: Tell me then how the play is different from the movie. The musical.

Walker: Well, musicals have a lot more music.

Tavis: (laughs)

Walker: And I think that the relationship, for instance, between Harpo and Sofia, which I think many men must have found very problematic, because she's a very strong woman. But he loves her. Harpo actually adores her. He loves the strength that she has. So in the play, this relationship, I think, is much more developed as is the relationship between Celie and Shug. As is -see,one of the things that really bothered me, you know, because it felt like I had given a gift that people just didn't even see, this is a novel about God.

That's what 'The Color Purple' is about. It's not about men beating up women and women that - all of that's in there, but the primary meaning of 'The Color Purple' is that it is a book about God, about how we relate to God, what we understand God to be. How we relate to nature, whether we really want to hang on to the religion that our parents have, you know, sort of drilled into us, the same religion that was drilled into them by their ancestors and then by the slave owners. Do we really want to keep that religion? That's the question that's at the heart of this novel. And that was completely missed.

Tavis: Well, it is a classic piece of work. It is now a Broadway play open to the public on December 1st. 'The Color Purple', produced by Oprah Winfrey and Quincy Jones. It's nice to see you, Ms. Walker.

Walker: It's nice to see you, too.

Tavis: That's our show for tonight. Thanks for watching. See you back here next time. Keep the faith.