My best friend once told me, “If you’ve never read The Color Purple, you don’t know The Color Purple.” Upon reading for the first time, despite watching the critically acclaimed film from the 80’s most nights in high school, I fully agree.

I will only say the movies & theatrical adaptations do 2 incredible disservices to Alice Walker’s masterpiece: they minimize Celie’s queerness, and the presence of women actively loving women.

Celie’s queerness resonates throughout the novel, from beginning to end, it’s palpable:

“He beat me today cause he say I winked at a boy in church. I may have got somethin in my eye but I didn’t wink. I don’t even look at mens. That’s the truth. I look at women, tho, cause I’m not scared of them.”

Shug Avery’s arrival made her keenly aware of her attraction, gave her the language for it, and the opportunity to express it:

“First time I got the full sight of Shug Avery long black body with it black plum nipples, look like her mouth, I thought I had turned into a man…I wash her body, it feel like I’m praying. My hands tremble and my breath short.”

Women loving women is the heartbeat of this story. The Color Purple encompasses multiple love stories of various natures between all of these women: Celie and Nettie (sisters), Celie and Shug (lovers), Celie and Sophia (in-laws & friends), Sophia & Squeak (sister-wives). I think historically we’ve put too much emphasis on the brutality Celie faces from the men in her life, when The Color Purple is so much more about the tender loving kindness the women in this book demonstrate to each other. Woman defending women, women speaking up for women, women showing up for women, women saving women, women seeing women, women helping women realize and act on their gifts, women loving women, romantically & otherwise.

So, basically, this is the g.o.a.t. WLW novel, and I’m changed forever by it. If you haven’t experienced this masterpiece on the page, do so immediately.

Yikes on bikes, the internet made us weirdos.

Romantic rejection has always been hard, but in this current epoch - having 24 hour access to what folks are thinking and doing online, the ease in which we are able to present a falsified self to the masses, and cultivate echo chambers to consistently regurgitate a single perspective with oftentimes scary, fucked up rhetoric - rejection has become dangerous, to self and others. This collection of interconnected short stories communicated to me that the internet can alter one’s general concept of reality, especially when it comes to interpersonal and romantic expectations. Whether it’s possessing this entitlement to romantic love, to espousing the belief that you are not worthy of love, the internet will take these thoughts to the extremes with some folks. I mean, each one of Tulathimutte’s characters need therapy and prescriptions, in my opinion. Telling these stories through a comedic lens helped ease the sting. However, the mirror of Rejection, as a person who’s chronically online, is spotless. Proceed with caution.