Study Questions

1. What is Shug Avery’s nickname?

2. How does the priest characterize Shug in his sermon?

3. Celie says that there is “one good thing” about the fact that Mr.____ doesn’t do any work on the farm. What is that thing?

4. How does Shug survive when she is sicker than Celie’s mama when she died?

5. How many kids has Shug had with Mr.____?

6. Where are Shug’s kids now?

7. Describe Mr.____’s father.

8. What can Mr.____ vouch for about Shug?

9. What does Tobias bring for Shug?

10. Why does Tobias wish his wife, Margaret, was a lot more like Celie?

Answers

1. She is known as the Queen Honeybee.

2. Shug is the nameless “strumpet in short skirts, smoking cigarettes, drinking gin.”

3. Since Mr.____ never does work in the field, Celie and Harpo never miss him when he leaves the farm.

4. Celie says that Shug is able to survive because she is “more evil than my mama.”

5. Shug Avery has had three children with Mr.____.

6. Shug’s children are now staying with her mother.

7. Old Mr.____ is “a little short shrunk up man with a bald head and gold spectacles.” He clears his throat “like everything he say need announcement.”

8. Mr.____ knows that all of Shug’s children have the same
father.

9. Tobias brings a box of chocolate for Shug.

10. Tobias wishes that Margaret was “always busy” like Celie so that she could save [him] a bundle of money.