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Lee, Younghwa. “‘You Black, You Poor, You Ugly, You a Woman’: The Subaltern in The Color Purple.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 38.1 (2012): 119-141. In The Color Purple, African-American female figures are foreshadowed by the status of the Third World women. The African-American female body is sexually exploited and materialized in the same way as the Third World female. Paralleling both the letters of Celie and Nettie, Alice Walker compares the hierarchy that represses women in America to that one within the colonial regime. In addition, Christianity is handled as complicit to European imperialism in post-colonial literature. Celie’s final refusal to write the letter to God works against the dynamic of colonialism, and Nettie’s missionary failure in Africa reinforces it. According to Spivak, subalterns, such as Celie, who are doubly oppressed by gender and race, cannot be heard. In The Color Purple, the resistance against the white hierarchy, and the genuine “blackness” that the female seeks, allow the subaltern to speak. (Chonbuk National University)