What the heck is...?

Question

Olinka in The Color Purple?!

Ugh. They keep saying it like over and over again but what is it?!!??!?!! I'm reading the cliff notes to the book so i dont know if Olinka is in the actual book. but either way. can you please help me?!

Answer 1

Olinka is the name of the (fictional) country in Africa where Nettie stayed as part of her missionary work.

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"The early 1990s were a difficult time for Walker, for she ended her 13 year relationship with Robert Allen and contracted Lyme disease. But none of these things stopped her from writing. Shortly before addressing the controversy of The Color Purple in The Same River Twice: Honoring the Difficult, Walker produced another book which brought about much controversy in the critical world, Possessing the Secret of Joy, in 1992. The book focused on Tashi, a young woman living in the fictional African country of Olinka, who is forced by her tribe to take part in the rituals of female circumcision, a process which ruins the rest of Tashi's life. The novel describes graphically the process of female genital mutilation and the repercussions of such actions, including not only physical and psychological problems, but also an inability to keep intact gender. Before the book is finished, Tashi loses all pleasure from sexual encounters, gives birth to a mentally-challenged son, and due to the traumatic nature of the chain of events, is driven to murder the woman who initially circumcised her."

". I do not know from what part of Africa my African ancestors came, and so I claim the continent. I suppose I have created Olinka as my village and the Olinkans as one of my ancient, ancestral tribal peoples."

Answer 2

Yes it is in the letters Celie gets. Olinka is a place in Africa. The letters describe their customs.
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They're, Their, There - Three Different Words.

Careful or you may wind up in my next novel.

Pax - C