Arguement for Tcp to Be Inlcuded in Literary Canon

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Arguments to why The Colour Purple by Alice Walker should be included in the A-level Literary Canon The most prominent feature to the studied canon of texts is that the majority of writers included are ‘white, middle or upper class males.’[1] This brings to light the fact that the writers chosen all belong ‘ to the same socio-economic, racial and gender group’[1]. Alice Walker’s novel The Colour Purple was once part of the A level syllabus but no longer included amongst the canon of texts. Considered to be an all time classic and named by the Guardian as one of the ‘1000 novels everyone must read’, it should be included in the canon. For any literature student, it would be beneficial to study a diverse range of writers no matter of what class, gender or race they belong to. Of personal opinion, Alice walker’s “visibility as a major American talent has been obscured by a familiar bias that assumes white male writers, and the literature they create, to be the norm."All in all, literature should not be based by social construction but on its ‘aesthetic’ [1] beauty. A major text, The Colour Purple has become an icon of literature that heals, that enlightens, and that empowers. Set in the Deep South during the first half of the twentieth century, Alice Walker’s classic brings to life American history, world history, women’s history [and] civil rights history. [2] She exposes and explores the nature of a society and era where segregation and inequality of rights between races and gender was present. Alice Walker’s strong ‘womanist’ views and participation involving the civil rights movement are clear influences on her work as a writer. ‘Harpo ast his daddy why he beat me. Mr__say because she my wife/Wives [are] like children.... Nothing can do that better than a good sound beating.’ Published in the early 1980’s, among the time of the Womanist Movement campaigns as
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