It’s hard to overstate the literary and cultural influence of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Color Purple. In the nearly forty years since its publication, this story of Black women coming of age in early twentieth-century Georgia has inspired an Oscar-nominated film, a Tony-award-winning musical, and the work of many contemporary writers, including New York Times critic Salamishah Tillet. Join Tillet and WBEZ reporter Natalie Moore for a conversation about the ongoing significance of this seminal novel as detailed in Tillet’s In Search of The Color Purple.
- Registered guests will receive details on how to access the event via email immediately upon registration, and receive email reminders closer to the event date.
- This program will be livestreamed on YouTube on May 6th at 7pm central time with a live Q+A, and registered guests will have a period of 7 days to enjoy the program if you can’t join the livestream.
- All CHF's virtual events have closed captions. Please reach out to us at access@chicagohumanities.org with any questions or to request additional accommodations.
- Please reach out to tickets@chicagohumanities.org with any further questions–we have a small staff and promise to reply as soon as we can!
About the Book:
Pre-order your book and save 20% on the list price while directly supporting independent bookselling in Chicago.CHF does not earn revenue from book sales.- Books will be shipped to registered guests within 7-10 business days of the event (U.S. addresses only). Please be patient as you may be affected by general shipping delays occurring nationwide.
- The Chicago Humanities Festival is pleased to partner with the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, a not-for-profit bookstore whose mission is bookselling.
- If you have any questions about Seminary Co-op book fulfillment, please contact Seminary Co-op.
Salamishah Tillet
Salamishah Tillet is a scholar, cultural critic, and activist. Previously a professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Tillet was also a visiting fellow at Princeton and scholar-in-residence at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center. She is currently the Henry Rutgers Professor of African American Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark, the faculty director of New Arts Justice at Express Newark, and a contributing critic-at-large at The New York Times. With her sister, Scheherazade Tillet, she founded A Long Walk Home, an art organization that empowers young people to end violence against girls and women.
Natalie Moore
Natalie Moore is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation. She is the South Side bureau reporter for WBEZ. Before joining WBEZ, she covered Detroit City Council for Detroit News. She worked as an education reporter for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and a reporter for the Associated Press in Jerusalem.