In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

by Alice Walker

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Summary

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Introduction

Alice Walker’s essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” first appeared in Ms magazine in May 1974. The essay later became the title work in Walker’s 1983 collection of the same name. The matching titles reveal the centrality of the essay’s ideas as the guiding principles for the entire collection. Indeed, the author fills the essay (and the collection more broadly) with reflections about the struggle and creative perseverance black women must face and embody.

“In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” combines several literary genres in its discussion of the experience of Black American women. Walker’s meditations cover a broad period of American history: She pans back to the eighteenth-century enslaved poet Phillis Wheatley, walks through the post-Reconstruction period and into the 1920s, then culminates in her own era. Throughout, Walker aims to celebrate the creativity of Black women who overcame their circumstances with strength and ingenuity.

Plot Summary

“In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” opens with a quote from poet Jean Toomer in which he describes his attempts to express words of hope to a Black prostitute in the 1920s South. He explains how he spoke to her about building up her “inner life” through art and how, as he did, she fell asleep. 

Walker notes that this woman, like so many others, had a deep, unconscious spirituality. Yet, because of her status, gender, and race—her pain and oppression—she was blind to it and could no longer perceive it. 

Women such as the prostitute Toomer described were, in a strange way, "saints." It was these “crazy, loony, pitiful women” who also had vivid dreams and visions that allowed them to escape their bleak realities. This creativity, this imagination, was—and is still—lost to systemic circumstances that erase potential. 

Toomer noticed this all on his walk through the South. He saw women “enter loveless marriages,” have children, and even “become prostitutes” without joy and fulfillment. Though their creativity and spirituality often went unexpressed and, sometimes, suppressed, these mothers and grandmothers became “Creators” even amid “spiritual waste.” They could have been great writers or artists, but they never had the chance. Still, their artistic power could not be eliminated, so they sang, told stories, and found and used the creative channels open to them.

Walker then paraphrases a poem by Okot p’Bitek, in which the poet mourns the loss of a mother. Even as she mourns, she conjures a sense of healing. Oppression and death, she explains, are not the end of the story for Black mothers and grandmothers: They did not perish “in the wilderness” but instead left their descendants searching for their past, their identity.

Walker then turns her attention to Virginia Woolf and Phillis Wheatley. Woolf wrote a book called A Room of One’s Own—the title of which refers to the space women need to pursue their creativity. Comparatively, Wheatley operated under the restrictions of slavery, where she tried “to use her gift for poetry in a world that made her a slave." According to Walker, her efforts saw little success, yet she approached her craft with endurance even amid ill health and suffering. Walker does not appreciate Wheatley’s poetry, though she admires her dedication.

Black women, Walker continues, have been called many things, including “the mule  of the world.” They have often found their gifts—especially love, faithfulness, and ingenuity—“knocked down our throat.” Yet they persisted in their creativity, and it became their strength. Walker tells the story of her mother, who faced years of back-breaking work raising a large family. Yet, her creative spirit showed through in her stories and, especially, her gardens. Between working in...

(This entire section contains 775 words.)

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the fields, keeping house, and raising children, Walker’s mother grew “ambitious gardens” with many different flowers, brilliant with color and perfectly designed as stunning works of art.

No matter how hard life was, Walker’s mother relished the beauty of her gardens. When she works with her flowers, her daughter explains, “She is radiant.” It is, she describes, as if her mother becomes a Creator, one who “order[s] the universe in the image of her personal conception of Beauty.” This art is her legacy, her gift to her daughter. Walker honors her mother and this gift with a poem, appreciative of the “heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength” she has found in her mother’s garden. She ends with a brief description of an African mother from two hundred years ago—describing her singing, painting, and telling stories, all in service of creating a heritage for generations of daughters.

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