Alice Walker's In Love and Trouble Essay

Alice Walker speaks of her mother and grandmothers’ dark pasts of slavery and discrimination throughout their lives. Although women through the years have had it tough, colored women have and continue to have a deeper struggle within society. Alice Walker’s essay is inspiring and heartwarming because it tells of how the women in their lives have found beauty within a dark part of history. Her mother although had little, found a sense of identity with the joy of her own vibrant garden. She speaks a lot about how many people of color continued to keep their identity and spirituality in a time where they could have been discouraged. I think that Walker’s essay is really eye opening because so many women have struggled before us to pave the way for women of all

In “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens”, Alice Walker looks to educate us on the hardships that almost all black women face when trying to express themselves through things such as art. She delves into many sociological and psychological concepts that have affected black women throughout human history. These concepts and ideologies created a realm for mass exclusion, discrimination, and oppression of many African American women, including Alice Walker’s Mother, who Alice utilizes as one of her particular examples. The writing thematically aims to show how these concepts of sexism, racism, and even classism have contributed to black women’s lack of individuality, optimism, and fulfillment for generations. The author does a tremendous job of defending and expanding upon her arguments. She has a credible background, being a black woman that produces the art of literature herself. As well as being raised by one, Walker’s first-hand experience warrants high regard. Therefore, her use of abstract and introspective language is presented clearly and convincingly. Also, her use of evidence and support from sources like Jean Toomer, Virginia Woolf, and Phillis Wheatley, all produce more validity for her stance through poems, quotes, and even experiences. All these individuals have their own accounts pertaining to the oppression of black women and their individuality. Successfully arguing that the artistry plights of black women described in “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” are

She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.

In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.

During the times of slavery, colored individuals were labeled as “other” in the United States. Black families were categorized as pathological, deviant, and in need of fixing. Black families struggled a lot. Poverty rates were sky high for single women who were the head of their household, especially for Black and Latino women. They were also the face of the homeless community, which was growing rapidly. The government then decided to implement marriage and fatherliness encouragements to ease poverty which resulted in societal problems surrounding the Black and Latino women.

Alice Walker's The Color Purple is an excellent account of the life of poor black women who must suffer not only social ostracism due to gender and skin color but also women who suffer greatly at the hands of black men.  This is true in terms of infidelity, physical and verbal abuse, and sexual abuse.

Slavery has a huge affect on how a woman can mother her children for it drastically increases the difficulty of such a task while limiting the availability of the mother herself. Slavery averts a mother’s ability to form an intricate relationship with her children, making the connection between the two subjects weak and almost non existent. In Beloved, slavery is a huge element in why Sethe is the mother she is, and it has influenced many of her more regrettable actions. Throughout the book the Morrison shines some light onto the horrible treatment of some of the characters, this is reflected when Paul D states: “White people believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood... it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place. . . . It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them.” (Morrison). Here we can see that the amount of degradation and dehumanization that occurred during this time period as a slave was unbearably prevalent, posing as a huge distractor towards mothers and their ability to care for their child. The Owners of the slaves rarely viewed the slaves as living beings, so one

While the majority of black women accounts are lost to history due to anti-literacy laws, we do have a good idea of what their lives were, through slave narratives and other records. The life of a female slave in pre-civil war America was characterized by sexual assault, physical and mental abuse along with harsh treatment both in the fields and inside the master’s house. Female slaves were treated as property with no regards to their

White women back then were raised by the “Cult of Domesticity”, but black women were taken away from their families to move into other plantations and were stripped away from their moral values which destroyed them. In (Doc 7), Harriet Jacobs, a former slave girl, was abused by her owners and was

Walker not only stands as a light in the lives of women, but in the black community. She saw a life for African Americans that evolved from the struggle they endured. According to Walker there are five main causes of struggle: equal opportunity, class placement, standard of living, spiritual belief, and racism and suffrage. During the 1950s, when Walker was growing up, many African Americans had doors shut in there face because of their race, whether they were qualified or not. They were considered lower class, usually living in rundown parts of town. Blacks were given the left overs of whites and were excepted to be grateful for what they were given. Many whites saw themselves as superior to blacks so much so that they believed that it was Gods will for races to be segregated. For black women, struggle came twice as hard being judged by both race and sex. While society tried to create struggle to bring blacks down that same struggle caused a heavy reliance on spiritual faith as an uplifting motivation. Furthermore, Walker analyzes her personal experiences with struggle in her poem “While Love is Unfashionable.” In the poem, Walker describes her marriage with her white husband. Many did not believe in her marriage. It was often seen as incorrect to marry outside of your race. However, Walker’s opinion was different as she stood by her decision, willing to pay the consequences she had to endure for doing so. Her ability to

     Alice Walker is an African American essayist, novelist and poet. She is described as a “black feminist.”(Ten on Ten) Alice Walker tries to incorporate the concepts of her heritage that are absent into her essays; such things as how women should be independent and find their special talent or art to make their life better. Throughout Walker’s essay entitled “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” I determined there were three factors that aided Walker gain the concepts of her heritage which are through artistic ability, her foremothers and artistic models.

During the time of slavery, not only were African Americans were treated unfairly, but their women had it worse at times; African American women would be raped would be raped by their owners, or be trafficked around from man to man (Browne-Marshall). The white man was seen as evil, disgusting and cruel, so being a black woman carrying a white man’s child was basically

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use” she creates a conflict between characters. Walker describes a family as they anxiously await the arrival of, Dee, the older sister of the family. When Dee (Wangero) comes home to visit Mrs. Johnson and Maggie, right away the readers see the differences in the family by how they talk, act, and dress. Dee has changed her name to an "African" name and is collecting the objects and materials of her past. Dee thinks that since she is in college she knows mores then the rest of her uneducated family. She is more educated and looks down on the simple life of her mother and sister. When Dee asks for a beautiful family heirloom quilt to hang on her wall, Mrs. Johnson finally denies her of this task. Mrs. Johnson finally sees that Dee does not want the quilt for the same purpose as Maggie does. Instead, Mrs. Johnson will give Maggie the quilt to keep her and her husband warm. The theme of the importance of heritage becomes clear at this point of the story. This theme is shown by Walker's use of conflict, irony, and symbolism. All throughout her short story she incorporates heritage. She describes it as a background feeling between family members, and African heritage to heirlooms that have been in the family line for generations. Dee the older sister takes her heritage for granted by only wanting her heirlooms for her educational purposes.

         Alice Walker was born on February 9, 1944 in Georgia. She is a famous black -American writer who is concerned about the identity of black Americans, and especially the black female experience. Until 1960, black American literature was driven by black male writers such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes. Because of discrimination, black women writers were not able to express themselves. They were restrained by society. There was a major resistance to conservative culture. Women writers who raised a hare in a society were Toni Morrison, Carolyn, Paule Marshall, Nikki Giovani, Alice Walker. Among them, a writer who was the most focused on the issue of discrimination and women’s right in black society was Alice Walker. Donna Seaman, a senior editor for Booklist, interviewed Alice Walker that “Segregation in Georgia, our apartheid, was a real blow to me. It was a real shock to see that people would actually spend their time making horrible laws and killing people and tearing down our school when, instead, they could be admiring what was all around them”. Even she was not allowed to enter a public library in her town because of racial discrimination. She had described her experiences of racism, human rights abuses, and discrimination since she was very young. Laurie McMillan said, “Walker is very aware of the history of oppression of African Americans, and she recognizes the importance of building a heritage to help African Americans thrive.” (113) Alice Walker went through many experiences influenced her views about herself as well views of everything that surrounded

The women of the late sixties, although some are older than others, in Alice Walker’s fiction that exhibit the qualities of the developing, emergent model are greatly influenced through the era of the Civil Rights Movement. Motherhood is a major theme in modern women’s literature, which examines as a sacred, powerful, and spiritual component of the woman’s life. Alice Walker does not choose Southern black women to be her major protagonists only because she is one, but because she had discovered in the tradition and history they collectively experience an understanding of oppression that has been drawn from them a willingness to reject the principle and to hold what is difficult. Walker’s most developed character, Meridian, is a person