The Color Purple Trivia
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57 free The Color Purple trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
The Color Purple trivia for book clubs, film nights and musical-theatre fans. The quiz starts with Alice Walker's 1982 novel - Celie's letters, Nettie's years in Africa, Sofia's defiance, Shug Avery and the pants business in Memphis - and asks about the Pulitzer, the censorship fights and Walker's own remarkable life, from Eatonton to the grave of Zora Neale Hurston. From there it moves to Steven Spielberg's 1985 film and its eleven Oscar nominations without a win, Quincy Jones's score, the casting of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, then the Broadway musical (LaChanze, Cynthia Erivo, 'I'm Here') and Blitz Bazawule's 2023 movie musical with Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks and Taraji P. Henson. Questions range from easy to expert, so casual viewers and lifelong fans can both find their level. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote the novel The Color Purple?
Alice Walker
Alice Walker caught Langston Hughes's attention early: he put her short story 'To Hell with Dying' in his 1967 anthology.
Q 02Celie first sees Shug Avery in what?
A picture
A picture: later Mister brings the real Shug home sick, and it is Celie who nurses her back to health.
Q 03Which prize did The Color Purple win, one Gwendolyn Brooks had won for poetry decades earlier?
Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize: yet the same novel later became one of the books most often challenged in US schools and libraries.
Q 04The Color Purple won which 1983 prize, one that Saul Bellow won three times?
National Book Award
National Book Award: its author at first doubted the novel should become a film, yet she sold the film rights.
Q 05The Color Purple is written in which literary form?
Epistolary
Epistolary: warned to tell no one about her abuse, Celie confides it in letters, so readers learn her story in her own words.
Q 06To whom does Celie address her early letters?
God
God: the man she calls Pa warns her, 'You better not never tell nobody but God,' so she pours everything into letters to God.
Q 07The Color Purple is set in the countryside of which US state?
Georgia
Georgia: Celie ends the story there in the house her real father left, which her stepfather had kept until his death.
Q 08In The Color Purple, what first name does Celie finally call her husband, long known only as Mister?
Albert
Albert: she starts using it after Mister's life falls apart and he changes, and the man who once beat her becomes her friend.
Q 09What is the name of the man Celie believes is her father, later revealed to be her stepfather?
Alphonso
Alphonso: after white neighbors lynched Celie's real father for running too successful a store, Alphonso married her widowed mother.
Q 10Mister's son Harpo marries which strong-willed woman?
Sofia
Sofia: when Harpo, on Celie's advice, tries to beat her into obeying, she fights back.
Q 11Shug Avery, Mister's long-time mistress, makes her living as what?
A blues singer
A blues singer: learning that Mister beats Celie, Shug vows to stay in the house until she is sure he has stopped.
Q 12Harpo's wife is beaten by police and jailed after striking whom?
The mayor
The mayor: when she refused his wife, he slapped her, and she knocked him down.
Q 13How does Harpo's wife serve much of her sentence?
Housemaid
Housemaid: she ends up as maid to the very woman whose offer of work she had refused.
What is the real name of Harpo's girlfriend, nicknamed Squeak?
Q 21Late in the novel Shug breaks Celie's heart by falling for which member of her band?
Germaine
Germaine: Celie resolves to love Shug even if Shug doesn't love her back, and Shug eventually returns to her.
Q 22When Shug returns to town married, what is her new husband's name?
Grady
Grady: when Shug finally leaves Mister's house, she takes Grady and Celie with her.
Q 23How did the 1985 film of The Color Purple soften Celie and Shug's love affair?
Reduced it to a kiss
Reduced it to a kiss: gone was the novel's scene of Shug teaching Celie about her own body.
Mary Agnes
Mary Agnes: after the warden assaults her while she bargains for Harpo's wife's release, she insists Harpo call her by her real name.
Q 15Celie's sister goes to Africa with which missionary couple?
Samuel and Corrine
Samuel and Corrine: by coincidence, the couple had already adopted Celie's own two children, taken from her as babies.
Q 16What are the names of Celie's two children, taken from her shortly after birth?
Olivia and Adam
Olivia and Adam: raised abroad by the missionaries who adopted them, they finally come home to Celie at the story's end.
Q 17Celie, Shug and Squeak leave for which city, where Celie starts her own business?
Memphis
Memphis: before leaving, Celie curses Mister, telling him nothing will go right for him until he changes his ways.
Q 18What kind of business does Celie start after leaving Mister?
Sewing pants
She later inherits her parents' land and house and moves back home to run it from there.
Q 19In Africa, Celie's son marries which local girl?
Tashi
Tashi: when she feels ashamed of her ritual facial scars, her future husband has his own face scarred to match.
Q 20The Color Purple's long-awaited family reunion takes place on which holiday?
Fourth of July
Fourth of July: after thirty years apart, the whole family gathers for a barbecue, and Celie says she has never felt younger.
Q 24In The Color Purple, what destroys the African village where Celie's sister lives?
A rubber company's road
A rubber company's road: the company then made the villagers pay for water on land that had been theirs.
Q 25The Color Purple's author refused to let a new edition of the book be published in which country?
Israel
Israel: in her letter refusing it, she noted she had likewise kept the 1985 film from being shown in apartheid South Africa.
Q 26The Color Purple's author was born in which small farming town, the model for the book's setting?
Eatonton
Eatonton: a childhood injury left her shy, and she found solace in reading and writing poetry.
Q 27The Color Purple's author was blinded in her right eye at age eight by what?
A BB gun pellet
A BB gun pellet: a brother fired it during a game of cowboys and Indians, and with no car to reach a doctor, the eye's sight was lost.
Q 28Which term did The Color Purple's author coin for 'a Black feminist or feminist of color'?
Womanist
Womanist: the idea grew from a sense that mainstream feminism had neglected the concerns of Black women.
Q 29The Color Purple's author graduated from which college in Yonkers, New York?
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College: a study trip to Africa while she was a student there fed the poems of her first book, Once.
Q 30Which later novel by The Color Purple's author centres on the African wife of Celie's son?
Possessing the Secret of Joy
Possessing the Secret of Joy: it follows her through female genital cutting, a practice its author campaigned against in real life.