At the premiere of the new adaptation of the bestseller in Los Angeles, Oprah Winfrey told how the book “The Color Purple” helped her overcome the trauma of being raped at the age of 14, reports AFP.

The new adaptation, a musical film, is the second big-screen adaptation of the Alice Walker book, following the 1985 film directed by Steven Spielberg, in which the American TV star made her feature film debut.

According to her, “The Color Crimson” is about the hardships, suffering and especially the sexual violence that many black women faced in the early 20th century in the American South.

“The Color Purple has been a blessing in my life since I first read it, because up until then I didn’t know there were words for what happened to me,” Oprah Winfrey said Thursday at a screening in Los Angeles.

“I was raped when I was 14 years old and I gave birth to a child that died and I didn’t have the words to understand it,” explained the one who is now often considered one of the most powerful women in the world.

The Color Purple tells the story of Celie, a young black woman from rural Georgia in the southern United States who was raped by her father and forced to give up her two children.

Celie is then forced to marry an abusive man, but finds strength in discussions with other women dealing with their own traumas.

Oprah Winfrey said that when she found out in the 1980s that Steven Spielberg would be directing the film, she “literally got down on my knees and prayed every night to be in the movie.”

The role of Sofia brought her an Oscar nomination. The film “changed my life,” she told an audience in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The new adaptation, directed by Blitz Bazawule in the form of a musical, has a lighter, often cheerful and upbeat tone.

Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey are co-producing the Warner Bros. film, which opens in US theaters on Christmas Day and in France on January 24.