Q 01/05

Who wrote the novel The Color Purple?

A) Maya Angelou

B) Gloria Naylor

C) Alice Walker

D) Toni Morrison

Answer · why

C) Alice Walker

Alice Walker caught Langston Hughes's attention early: he put her short story 'To Hell with Dying' in his 1967 anthology.

Q 02/05

Celie first sees Shug Avery in what?

A) A dream

B) A picture

C) A church

D) A parade

Answer · why

B) A picture

A picture: later Mister brings the real Shug home sick, and it is Celie who nurses her back to health.

Q 03/05

Which prize did The Color Purple win, one Gwendolyn Brooks had won for poetry decades earlier?

A) Booker Prize

B) Pulitzer Prize

C) Nobel Prize in Literature

D) Newbery Medal

Answer · why

B) Pulitzer Prize

Pulitzer Prize: yet the same novel later became one of the books most often challenged in US schools and libraries.

Q 04/05

The Color Purple won which 1983 prize, one that Saul Bellow won three times?

A) National Book Award

B) PEN/Faulkner Award

C) Edgar Award

D) Hugo Award

Answer · why

A) National Book Award

National Book Award: its author at first doubted the novel should become a film, yet she sold the film rights.

Q 05/05

The Color Purple is written in which literary form?

A) Picaresque

B) Epistolary

C) Stream of consciousness

D) Frame narrative

Answer · why

B) Epistolary

Epistolary: warned to tell no one about her abuse, Celie confides it in letters, so readers learn her story in her own words.