Around the world, at any instant, millions of people are watching movies. They watch mainstream entertainment, serious "art films," documentaries, cartoons, experimental films, educational shorts. They sit in air-conditioned theaters, in village squares, in art museums, in college classroo...

Both Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's tale of Beloved chronicle stories of African-American women's experiences of triumph and suffering over oppression and discrimination. But while Walker and Morrison share a common literary heritage in the tradition of Afr...