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It is October 1985, two months before Steven Spielberg’s movie adaptation of the book would be released. Her elegance and audaciousness pierce through as she reads letters from The Color Purple. Not only did it become possible to publish a Black feminist protest novel, but the book marked a turning point in which a protest novel could be Black, feminine, and explicitly queer. Though Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982) was a silent presence in the literary world upon its publication, it represented a shift in what was possible in the realm of trade publishing for Black women’s literature. Black lesbian relationships, though a well-known presence within Black communities, were almost non-existent within Black literature. This yearning exemplified the state of Black literature in the 1960s, up until the late 1970s. In 1978, Barbara Smith, a Black feminist writer and organizer, published her groundbreaking text, Toward a Black Feminist Criticism, which she ended by expressing her desire to read one book, just one book that could reflect the experiences of Black lesbians loving one another affirmatively. Photo by Bettmann Collection/Getty Images