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60 free The Color Purple trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Color Purple trivia for book clubs, film nights and musical-theatre fans. The quiz starts with Alice Walker's 1982 novel - Celie's letters, Nettie's years in Africa, Sofia's defiance, Shug Avery and the pants business in Memphis - and asks about the Pulitzer, the censorship fights and Walker's own remarkable life, from Eatonton to the grave of Zora Neale Hurston. From there it moves to Steven Spielberg's 1985 film and its eleven Oscar nominations without a win, Quincy Jones's score, the casting of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey, then the Broadway musical (LaChanze, Cynthia Erivo, 'I'm Here') and Blitz Bazawule's 2023 movie musical with Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks and Taraji P. Henson. Questions range from easy to expert, so casual viewers and lifelong fans can both find their level. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote the 1982 novel The Color Purple?
Alice Walker
She had already published two novels, The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian, before her best-known book.
Q 02In what year was the novel first published?
1982
The film arrived just three years later, and the Broadway musical more than two decades after that.
Q 03Which honour did the novel win in 1983, making its author the first Black woman to win it for fiction?
Pulitzer Prize
Gwendolyn Brooks had won the same institution's poetry prize back in 1950.
Q 04Besides the Pulitzer, which other major US literary honour did the novel win in 1983?
National Book Award
In 2019 the BBC also placed it on its list of the 100 most influential novels.
Q 05The novel is written in which literary form?
Epistolary
Celie's early letters are addressed to God because she has no one else safe to tell about her stepfather's abuse.
Q 06To whom does Celie address her early letters?
God
Later in the book, after losing faith, she starts writing to her sister instead.
Q 07The novel is set in the rural countryside of which US state?
Georgia
The author based the setting on her own childhood home of Eatonton, though the 1985 film was shot elsewhere.
Q 08Celie eventually starts calling her husband, known only as 'Mister', by his first name. What is it?
Albert
She only uses it once his fortunes have declined; he later proposes they marry 'in the spirit as well as in the flesh' and she declines.
Q 09What is the name of the man Celie believes is her father, later revealed to be her stepfather?
Alphonso
Celie's real father was lynched, and her mother's mental collapse was exploited by the man who raised her.
Q 10Mister's son Harpo marries which strong-willed woman?
Sofia
When Harpo tries to beat her on Celie's advice, she fights back and wins.
Q 11Shug Avery, Mister's long-time mistress, makes her living as what?
A blues singer
She performs nightly at the juke joint Harpo opens after his wife leaves him.
Q 12Harpo's wife is beaten by police and jailed after striking whom?
The mayor
She had refused the mayor's wife's offer to work as her maid, and was slapped for her retort before hitting back.
Q 13How long is Harpo's wife's prison sentence?
12 years
Squeak talks the warden, her white uncle, into releasing her to work as the mayor's wife's maid instead.
What is the real name of Harpo's girlfriend, nicknamed Squeak?
Q 21Late in the novel Shug breaks Celie's heart by falling for which member of her band?
Germaine
Celie resolves to love Shug even if the love is not returned, and Shug eventually comes back.
Q 22When Shug returns to town married, what is her new husband's name?
Grady
It is while both husbands are out that Celie and Shug first sleep together and discover the hidden letters.
Q 23Where did the novel rank on the ALA's list of most challenged books of 2000-2009?
17th
It held the same position on the 1990-1999 list, and made the annual top ten in both 2007 and 2009.
In 2008 BBC Radio 4 serialised the novel in ten 15-minute episodes on which programme?
Mary Agnes
She later leaves town with Celie and Shug and starts singing herself.
Q 15Celie's sister goes to Africa with which missionary couple?
Samuel and Corrine
Unknown to anyone at first, the couple had adopted Celie's two children.
Q 16What are the names of Celie's two children, taken from her shortly after birth?
Olivia and Adam
Both were raised in Africa by missionaries and return to Celie's house at the very end of the novel.
Q 17Celie, Shug and Squeak leave for which city, where Celie starts her own business?
Memphis
Before leaving, Celie curses Mister at the dinner table in one of the book's most quoted scenes.
Q 18What kind of business does Celie start after leaving Mister?
Sewing pants
She later inherits her parents' land and house and moves back home to run it from there.
Q 19In Africa, Celie's son Adam marries which local girl?
Tashi
In solidarity with his bride's traditional facial scarring, Adam undergoes the same ritual himself.
Q 20At the end of the novel, Celie and her sister reunite after how many years apart?
30
Mister had hidden the sister's letters for years, which is why Celie assumed she was dead.
Woman's Hour
Nadine Marshall played Celie and the production won a Sony Radio Academy Silver Drama Award.
Q 25In 2012 the author refused to allow a new edition of the novel to be published in which country?
Israel
She did so as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, drawing criticism from Alan Dershowitz.
Q 26The author was born in which small farming town, the childhood home that inspired the novel's setting?
Eatonton
She was the youngest of eight children of sharecroppers and started school at four.
Q 27As an eight-year-old, the author was permanently blinded in her right eye by what?
A BB gun pellet
Her family had no car to get her to a doctor in time, and she has said the injury turned her toward reading and writing.
Q 28In 1983 the author coined which term for 'a Black feminist or feminist of color'?
Womanist
It appeared in her essay collection In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens.
Q 29In 1973 the author found and marked the unmarked grave of which Harlem Renaissance writer?
Zora Neale Hurston
The marker calls her 'a genius of the South' and gives a birth year a decade too late.
Q 30The author graduated in 1965 from which school in Yonkers, New York?
Sarah Lawrence College
She had started at Spelman in Atlanta and transferred after her mentor Howard Zinn was fired.