"The Color Purple" is regarded as Walker's most successful work, written in epistolary style. Alice walker won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the National Book Award for fiction. The novel depicts the harsh life of young African-American women in the south in early 20th century . The novel explores the individual identity of the African-American women and how their bonding with other women affects the health of their community at large. The major theme of the novel is the harm inflicted on the Black community, both by their own cycle of violence and the racially motivated hatred of Negroes in the south. The color purple deals with the struggle, both in American and in Africa, of women to gain recognition as individuals who deserve fair and equal treatment.