From the top 10 list of Edwidge Danticat
#8. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
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As if being black weren't hard enough, Walker's Pulitzer Prize— winning novel shows how bad life can get if you're also a woman. Wondrously, Walker gives voice to the unlikeliest of heroes- a barely literate teenager named Celie who writes letters to God as an escape from life with her monstrous stepfather. After raping and impregnating her, he forces her to marry Mr., a cruel older man. Hope comes in the form of Shug, Mr.'s lover, and together the two women begin to loosen the shackles of race and gender.