Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize–Winning Novel The Color Purple and Two Other Walker Titles Now Available as Ebooks from Open Road Integrated Media

“The Color Purple is an American novel of permanent importance.” —Newsweek

I think so many of us can quote parts (and for some all) of the movie The Color Purple. Someone will inevitably start a line...and we all finish it. But we may not fully grasp the importance of the work of Alice Walker in the framework of our literary culture. For all of you that ebook readers, now is the opportunity to read not only The Color Purple, but other novels by acclaimed author, Alice Walker. Please see the press release below for further details.

Open Road Integrated Media announces the ebook publication of three titles by celebrated author Alice Walker, including her novel The Color Purple, which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and was subsequently adapted into an Academy Award­–winning film starring Whoopi Goldberg and Danny Glover. Walker is known for her deep and unflinching explorations of black life in America, particularly the experiences of black women. In her public life, Walker has worked to address problems of injustice, inequality, and poverty as an activist, teacher, and public intellectual.

In The Color Purple Walker writes about the life of Celie, a young black woman living in the segregated South who undergoes a sexual and spiritual awakening. The 1983 novel represented a major breakthrough for mainstream African-American fiction, inviting favorable comparisons to the work of William Faulkner and prompting the New York Times Book Review to declare Walker a “lavishly gifted writer.”

Joining The Color Purple in this release is its follow-up, The Temple of My Familiar, in which characters Celie and Shug from The Color Purple subtly shadow the lives of dozens of characters, all dealing in some way with the legacy of the African experience in America. Also included in the release is Possessing the Secret of Joy, in which Walker exposes the abhorrent practice of female genital mutilation, as the protagonist must come to terms with the circumcision she endured as a child in Africa. On November 22, 2011, eight more titles will join the Alice Walker ebook collection from Open Road Media. They will include novels The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian; poetry collections Revolutionary Petunias, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, and Once; short story collections YouCan’t Keep a Good Woman Down and In Love & Trouble; and essay collection Living by the Word.

Extra content includes:

• Behind-the-scenes author commentary & videos at www.openroadmedia.com/authors/alice-walker.aspx
• Illustrated biography in each ebook, including unseen photographs and documents from Walker’s personal life and distinguished career        

Available September 20, 2011, from Amazon.com, Apple iBookstore, Barnesandnoble.com,Kobo Books, Sony Reader Store, and OverDrive:

The Color Purple

Possessing the Secret of Joy

The Temple of My Familiar

Eight more titles to join the Alice Walker ebook collection on November 22, 2011:

Novels: The Third Life of Grange Copeland, Meridian

Poetry: Revolutionary Petunias, Horses Make a Landscape Look More Beautiful, Once

Short Stories: You Can’t Keep a Good Woman Down, In Love & Trouble

Essays: Living by the Word