Study Questions

1. Who is “Mama” to Sofia’s children?

2. What is the “welcome mat” that Celie is going to use to “enter Creation”?

3. What is wrong with Miss Eleanor’s family?

4. Why must Sofia “act nice”?

5. What is the curse that Celie puts on Mr.____?

6. Why does Shug give Celie a bedroom in the back of the house?

7. What kind of pants does Mary Agnes pick out for herself?

8. Describe how Celie designs a pair of pants for Jack.

9. Does Celie care about Darlene’s teaching her to speak correctly?

10. What does Shug feel about Celie’s speech?

Answers

1. Sofia’s younger children call Odessa “Mama” and Sofia “Miss Sofia.”

2. Celie wants to use Mr.____’s dead body symbolically to “enter Creation,” since leaving him would be the same to her as entering the Kingdom of Heaven.

3. Jack tells the entire group that there is a lot of drinking in the mayor’s family and that the son (presumably Billy) has had trouble in college.

4. Sofia is still on parole and doesn’t want to end up back in jail.

5. Celie tells Mr.____ that everything that he has done to her is “already done to” him, and everything that he plans to do will come back to haunt him.

6. Shug knows that Celie likes to wake up with the sun on her face.

7. She picks a pair that is “the color of sunset, orangish with a little grayish fleck.”

8. Celie makes Jack’s pants with big pockets so that he can hold “little children’s things,” such as marbles and rocks. She decides to make narrow legs so that Jack will be able to run in case a child gets in trouble. She makes them “something he can lay back in when he hold Odessa in front of the fire.”

9. Celie doesn’t care because she is happy now.

10. Shug says that Celie “can talk in sign language for all I care.”