Almost every American of Gen X through Gen Y read The Color Purple in high school, but I was not among them. If I recall, my AP Literature class divided into smaller reading groups, and I ended up with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, which I cannot regret as it turned out to be one of my favorite books of all time, and gave me the opportunity to give an in-class presentation as a mute with a limp (Leah Forever!).  That said, I knew that The Color Purple was one of those essential texts that I had to read eventually.  It is certainly one of the most canonical American novels, and I the fact that I hadn’t read it was becoming a bigger and more shameful secret the longer I put it off.