the color purple

Throughout The Color Purple, the differences between blacks and whites are shown through race and domestics. Linda Selzer focuses on narration and family ties in this to novel to display the differences in both African American and African racial relations and domesticity. The two most important examples presented by Seizer are the African relations between Doris Baines and the Akwee and the American relations between Sophia and Eleanor Jane.

Doris is a white missionary with a black grandson and Nettie believes that this fits into the ethic that we are all “one mother’s children” (Selzer 3). But the grandson is more comfortable around the black Olinka than his white family member. This shows Nettie that relationships across racial lines are pseudo-relationships while those within the same...