Search Of Our Mother 's Garden By Alice Walker

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

Alice Malsenior Walker, an African American born into poverty, came into this world on February 9, 1944 in Eatonon, Georgia. She was the youngest child of eight children born to Willie Lee and Minnie Tallulah Walkers. Both of her parents were sharecroppers as well as expert story tellers. Things were not easy for the Walkers and Alice often witnessed her mother’s frustration of having the burden to take care of eight children with little means. Even though children of share croppers were usually made to work the fields, Alice’s mother made sure that her kids received an education. Alice was brilliant at writing poetry.

Within sixteen months of her arrival, she was reading astronomy, geography, history, and British literature. Wheatley was able to break a language barrier that had held so many others of her race back. Her desire for learning increased and the quest for knowledge became embedded in her spirit, mind, and soul. By her teenage years, Wheatley was a well known author, reciting poems for the New England elite in homes where blacks could not even sit at the table with whites.Phillis Wheatley made many contributions to American literature. Other than successfully representing and expressing the feelings of anger, frustration, and impatience of African American people abroad, she has paved the way for young aspiring African American writers.

Phillis Wheatley drew attention in the 18thcentury for being a black slave, and a child prodigy who was able to write poems and songs. She was born in Gambia, Africa, and brought to Boston as a slave when she was a child, and became slave and companion to John Wheatley’s wife. As she grew older, John Wheatley’s wife viewed her as a feeble and brilliant girl who deserves to be educated and felt great affection toward her. Therefore, Susanna Wheatley’s daughters taught Phillis how to read and write, so she delivered her honest opinions through her writings (Baym and Levine 763). Then she became the first African American writer to publish a book of poetry while other slaves were forbidden to learn how to read and write. Her ability to write and read gave her freedom of expression and enabled her to become a free woman. Her literacy influenced her surroundings in numerous ways. She was acknowledged by many people for her great poetical talents (“Phillis Wheatley, the First” para 3). In the poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” Phillis Wheatley appeals to ethos and pathos, uses suitable diction and a metaphor to demonstrate that the discrimination of Africans is barbarous, and encourages people to not judge by physical characteristics, but consider innate qualities.

The three writers grew up in different places. In the Essay, “The Soul of Black Folks” , Du Bois illustrates the soul of a black young boy who saw his life in two different worlds. The world of a black person and the world of a white person; the life of being black and the problems in the hill of New England where he grew up and faced racial discrimination. Du Bois was a sociologist, writer, educator and a controversial leader of the negro thought. Alice Walker wrote about how creative and artistic our mothers and grandmothers were in her essay “In Search Of Our Mother 's Garden”. She grew up in the 1960s in south Georgia where her mother worked as a maid to help support her eight children. Alice described her as a loving, strong and talented artist who showed her work in the garden. She wrote about her mother 's garden and how happy and radiant her mother was when she worked in her garden despite her busy days. She had no moment to sit down to feed her creative spirit because she was busy been a mother, a provider and a slave in the face of the society. She grew up seeing the struggles of hardworking,creative and strong African American mothers and grandmothers. She was a poet, novelist, and a womanist who was against racial and gender oppression of women. Glenn Loury grew up in Chicago’s South Side, where he attended political rallies. He described his childhood as being part of lower middle class. The writing of Du Bois , Alice Walker and Glenn Loury manifests

Writing is really important to make our voices heard and it also can be use as a source to express ourselves, especially if we do not have much freedom to do it orally. Readings such as daily newspapers have really large audiences and it also can be use as the ‘vehicle’ to deliver our thoughts and make sure people hear our opinions or things that we want to deliver. Based on a reading with a title “Broadening Representational Boundaries”, written by Rooks, we can see that the first black women millionaire in America, Madam CJ Walker, also authored numerous articles about her life and her business empire to be issued in various news sources around the country (76-95). Madam CJ Walker is not the only person who wrote her own stories to make her voices heard. There are many other public figures that also writing stories about themselves, such as Booker T. Washington who wrote “Up from slavery” and Du Bois’s who wrote “The Souls of Black Folk.”

The award-winning novel, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker, is a story about a woman going through cruel things such as: incest, rape, and physical abuse. This greatly written novel comes from a very active feminist author who used many of her own experiences, as well as things that were happening during that era, in her writing. “The Color Purple” takes place in the early 1900's, and symbolizes the economic, emotional, and social deprivation that African American women faced in Southern states of America. The main character of the story is Celie, a fourteen-year old that starts writing letters to God for thirty years, and then to her sister, Nette, who ran away to Africa to save herself from the troubles Celie went through. Celie starts off as a pushover and very dependent girl that would eventually grow and develop into an independent flourishing woman that opens a business making pants for all genders. This novel shows the hardship of a girl becoming a woman over the course of her life and eventually standing up for herself and being confident. Many of the experiences and characters of “The Color Purple” are based on history of that time and a bit of the author’s personal experiences. Her use of epistolary allows the reader to learn everything in the point of view of Celie. Alice Walker's influences for writing this novel range from her childhood experiences to the white society in her hometown of Eatonville, Georgia. Even during these times, it still shows that women

Phillis Wheatley tells a compelling story of a young slave girl who was kidnapped from Africa and brought to America. Her extraordinary story speaks volumes to African Americans today. Having been enslaved, Phillis Wheatley became the first African American, and one of the first women, to publish a book of poetry during colonial America. Wheatley’s writing granted her the ability to achieve a great amount of fame despite the spread of slavery and the realities of her colonial times. Often, Wheatley’s poetic works are characterized by a strict adherence to the conventions of neoclassical verse, a reliance on iambic pentameter, and a focus on public and impersonal themes rather than personal self-expression. Despite some literary critics’ concern

Like it was previously stated, the author is primarily targeting black women to encourage them to appreciate what their female ancestors suffered through to keep their heritage and spirit alive. However, Walker may have also had the intent to inform other audiences what it was like to be an African American woman in history. To accomplish her aims, she used certain types of style and tone that were very effective. Her stylistic approach was the use of many different examples. She tells the heartbreaking tale of little Phillis Wheatley, a "sickly, frail black girl" who was taken from her home as a small child to live and die as a slave in America. She includes a short passage written by poet Jean

     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.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “Blacks could deliver themselves of spontaneous bursts of emotion, but were incapable of the intellect and concentration that great art requires.” (Cook, Tatum, 2010). It is widely believed that people of African descent could not read poetry or understand art, let alone create them. Both Alice Walker and Patricia Smith are two great examples of how far, not only as African American have come, but also as African American Women. Whether white, black, or brown we all want to fit in. That is why I chose Alice Walker’s short story, “The Welcome Table” and Patricia Smith’s poem, “What It’s Like to Be a Black Girl.” They both have similar, yet different of setting a tone, imagery, symbolism, and point of views of how it feels to be an outcast. The main theme is about racism. Another theme is about black women who long to escape and be free, but cannot have that freedom because of the society they live in.

Alice Walker is a world renowned novelist, poet, short story author and political activist, with works including The Temples of my Familiar and In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. Yet Ms. Walker’s most critically acclaimed novel remains The Color Purple. The Color Purple tells the complex tale African American women, their brutal living conditions, everyday abuse, and their instinct to survive. The Color Purple was an immediate success due to its simple writing style, the intricate storyline, and compelling characters. In 1983 The Color Purple was recognized for these very reasons and graciously awarded The Pulitzer Prize For Fiction. Every year several Pulitzer Awards are handed out to distinguished

Phillis Wheatley is a Gambian born African American poet. She was bought off of the slave trade by the Wheatley family from Boston. Her love of writing was influenced by the reassurance of the Wheatley family who taught her how to read and write. The family encouraged her poetry and helped develop her literature skills. Phillis is known for becoming the first published African American poet. Many see her as the first writer to develop a genre of African American literature. Through an analysis of Wheatley’s work we can see how her influential work tends to carry themes from the point of view of American colonists. Her work also contains a general critique of slavery and descriptions of her attitudes towards the circumstances forced upon the enslaved.

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

     Like it was previously stated, the author is primarily targeting black women to encourage them to appreciate what their female ancestors suffered through to keep their heritage and spirit alive. However, Walker may have also had the intent to inform other audiences what it was like to be an African American woman in history. To accomplish her aims, she used certain types of style and tone that were very effective. Her stylistic approach was the use of many different examples. She tells the heartbreaking tale of little Phillis Wheatley, a “sickly, frail black girl” who was taken from her home as a small child to live and die as a slave in America. She includes a short passage written by poet Jean Toomer, in which he speaks to a black prostitute who falls asleep while he encourages her to express her artistic spirituality in a different way. She describes why these oppressed black women were named “Saints,” and at the conclusion of her essay, she uses her own mother as an example, and her own questions about her mother’s ability to keep her creative spirit alive throughout her