Through this Banned Book Writing Prompts series, Teachers & Writers Magazine aims to push back against the growing movement to censor what students can read and to show what happens when we enthusiastically embrace banned works rather than fear them. You can read an introduction to this series by Susan Karwoska here, and you can find more Banned Book Writing Prompts here.

I first read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple by choice in high school. I was already someone who loved reading and writing—someone who kept notebooks, underlined sentences, and felt steadier when words were nearby. What I didn’t yet understand was how silence works: how it’s taught, how it’s enforced, how it becomes a survival skill long before it becomes a problem.

I don’t remember walking away from the book thinking I’d “understood” it. What stayed with me instead was a kind of recognition that felt both clarifying and uncomfortable. The book made visible something I hadn’t known how to name—the way power decides whose thoughts matter and whose are meant to stay hidden. The voice of the narrator and main character, Celie, didn’t sound confident or polished. It sounded necessary.

Looking back, I realize the book let me see that voice doesn’t always begin as speech. Sometimes it begins as persistence. Sometimes it begins in private, before there’s any safety in being heard. That understanding stayed with me long after the details of the story faded.

The book made visible something I hadn’t known how to name—the way power decides whose thoughts matter and whose are meant to stay hidden.

The Color Purple follows Celie, a young Black girl growing up in rural Georgia in the early 1900s, whose life is shaped by poverty, abuse, racism, and separation from the people she loves. After enduring violence in her childhood and being forced into a loveless marriage to a man known as Mister, Celie begins writing letters to God as a way to survive what she cannot safely say aloud. When her beloved sister Nettie is pushed out of Celie’s life, the letters become even more important, holding Celie’s grief, questions, and quiet hope. Although Nettie continues writing to Celie, Mister hides her letters for years, leaving Celie to believe she has lost her sister completely. Over time, Celie’s relationships with women like Shug Avery, Sofia, and Nettie help her begin to see herself differently. Through writing, love, work, and the recovery of long-hidden truths, Celie moves from silence and survival toward identity, freedom, and reunion.

The novel is often challenged for its depictions of sexuality, its critiques of patriarchy and religion, and its refusal to soften the violence done to women. These objections are familiar. But what the book truly threatens is the idea that women’s interior lives should remain controlled, simplified, or invisible.

The Color Purple insists on showing thinking itself as an act of agency. Celie’s thoughts—her questions, doubts, and desires—exist even when her circumstances deny her autonomy. Walker assumes that this interiority matters. That insistence is what makes the novel endure and what continues to make it unsettling.

Writing becomes something more than expression. It becomes refuge.

Celie grows up in a world where obedience is demanded and speaking out is punished. Silence isn’t just expected; it’s enforced. In that context, writing becomes something more than expression. It becomes refuge. When Celie writes, she creates a private space where her authentic self can exist without interruption or correction. On the page, she doesn’t have to minimize what she knows or soften what she feels. Writing, for Celie, makes space for belief—an inner knowing that doesn’t require proof or permission—as the precursor to freedom. Literacy, first nurtured by her sister Nettie, gives Celie a way to express herself without being silenced, to narrate her life before anyone else does it for her. Her strength doesn’t arrive all at once, and it doesn’t erase pain. But it grows quietly, steadily, sustained by the act of putting words down. 

For Celie, writing to God becomes an act of faith. She writes to someone she has never seen, holding onto the possibility that she is still being heard, even when the world around her refuses to listen. That same faith echoes in her relationship with Nettie, whose letters Celie does not know are being written or hidden from her, and in the children she was forced to give up before she could fully understand the violence done to her. In each case, Celie is asked to believe in connection without proof. Writing gives her a way to hold onto what has been taken, delayed, or kept from her. It becomes the place where her grief, hope, and belief can survive until the truth finally reaches her.

For students, this matters. Many young writers understand—often intuitively—that speaking isn’t always safe. Writing can become the place where an inner voice is allowed to exist first, without performance or consequence. That alone can be transformative because it gives students permission to discover what they think before they are asked to defend it.

Nettie’s letters to Celie deepen this idea. She writes for years without knowing whether Celie will ever read her words. The letters are hidden, intercepted, denied—but they exist. When Celie finally discovers the letters, she learns that her sister lived. That her children lived. That her life is part of a larger story than the one she’s been told. The letters preserve truth across enforced silence. 

Writing doesn’t require immediate response to be meaningful. . . . It can carry connection forward even when voices are separated by power, distance, or time.

They also show that writing doesn’t require immediate response to be meaningful. It can be delayed conversation. It can outlast the dismissal of our truths. It can carry connection forward even when voices are separated by power, distance, or time. This is a powerful lesson for students who assume writing only matters if it’s seen right away.

When I first read The Color Purple, I did not have the language to explain all the ways writing could hold what a person was not yet ready, or safe enough, to say aloud. I only knew that Celie’s letters felt essential. They showed me that there is a special kind of liberation that comes through the power of the pen, the imagination, and the ability to hold onto something greater than what can be seen.

Celie does not simply survive what happened to her; she discovers that parts of her life, her family, and her future had been hidden from her. That truth gives her another kind of freedom: the chance to reclaim what was always meant to belong to her.

The Color Purple teaches us that, for those whose voices are monitored, dismissed, or misunderstood, writing can become a place of agency, reflection, and survival. The book does not promise that writing fixes everything. Instead, it shows something quieter and more enduring: that writing can hold truth until the world is ready for it, or until the writer is ready to claim it. That lesson remains more urgent than ever.

Writing Prompt 1: Seeing Over Time

This first prompt invites students to experience how the passage of time changes perception. I ask them to choose an image—person, place, or thing—and describe it at different moments in time. They write once before a period of change, once during it, and once after. The image stays the same. The writer, moving through time, does not. I explain that this should only be reflected in how the writer describes the image. The focus of this prompt is not on symbolism, but perception. How does your emotional, physical, or psychological state affect how you see things? What details come forward? What disappears? How does attention shift when you have lived more, lost more, or learned something new? 

For example, a student might describe the same oak tree outside their window before, during, and after a difficult season. At first, they may notice its height, shade, or vibrant color. Later, they may notice how the leaves have withered, how the once-bright green has faded, or how the branches now look bare, exposed, and empty. In winter, those same branches may appear covered in beautiful white snow. When spring returns, the tree may appear beautifully blossoming again, vibrant and full of life. While the tree does change with the seasons, its base and foundation remain the same. What shifts most is the writer’s perception. The meaning changes as the writer changes. This exercise emphasizes revision as re-seeing rather than correction. It encourages patience with the image, with the self, and with the writing process.

Writing Prompt 2: Letters + Response

In this second prompt, I ask students to write a letter to a younger version of themselves, to a character from the book, or to someone they feel separated from. The letter should focus on something the writer wants the recipient to understand: a question they never got to ask, a truth they want to clarify, encouragement they wish they could offer, or a moment they now see differently. I tell students that the emphasis should be on voice, audience, and intention, not confession. 

For example, a student writing to Celie might imagine reaching her at the moment she believes no one is listening. The student might write, “You are more than what has happened to you,” or ask, “What would you say if no one could punish you for telling the truth?” They might focus on Celie’s quiet strength, her love for Nettie, or the way her letters keep a part of her alive even when her world tries to silence her. The goal is not for the student to reveal something personal but to practice writing with care, purpose, and attention to the person receiving the letter.

Afterward, I ask them to exchange the letters with a peer, who writes a response. This exchange shifts writing into conversation. Writers must consider audience, tone, and what it means to be heard and answered. 

Clear framing matters here. This prompt is about craft, empathy, and exchange—not emotional disclosure. Students are invited to write thoughtfully, not vulnerably. The power lies in realizing that writing can create connection without demanding exposure.

Books Unbanned e-library cards are available nationwide to teens and young adults, ages 13 and up, and allow access to the library’s full e-book collection, where you can find many of the titles written about in this series. You can apply for a Books Unbanned Library Card at the Brooklyn Public Library and the Seattle Public Library.