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BOOK REVIEWS Andrea M. Wren is assistant editor of Eyeball, a literary arts journal.
THE SAME RIVER TWICE
Honoring the Difficult - A Meditation
On Life, Spirit, Art, and the Making
of the Film, "The Color Purple"
Ten Years Later
302 pages, Scribner, $24
ALICE WALKER'S COMPILATION arrives at a peculiar time: during the Spike Lee era of chronicling the rigors of film making; after the O.J. Simpson trial, which highlighted the issue of domestic violence; and in the middle of the "Waiting to Exhale" phenomena.
Two of the controversies surrounding "The Color Purple" involved Mister, the character who abused Celie and earned author Alice Walker the moniker of "male-basher," and the relationship between Celie and Shug, a relationship that was only hinted at in the movie, but, as Walker writes, "it was clear the women loved each other. It was clear that Shug is, like me, bisexual and that Celie is lesbian."
Ironically, "Waiting to Exhale" portrays a trite gay character, but that issue was seldom...