In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

by Walker, Alice

• ISBN13: 9780156445443
• ISBN10: 0156445441
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1984-10-01
• Publisher: Harvest Books

Summary

In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as ablack woman, writer, mother, and feminist in thirty-six pieces rangingfrom the personal to the political. Among the contents are essays aboutother writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and theantinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarringchildhood injury and her daughter' s healing words.

Author Biography

Alice Walker is the author of seven novels, three collections of short stories, three collections of essays, seven volumes of poetry, and several children's books. Her novel The Color Purple won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker lives in northern California

Table of Contents

PART ONE	3	(116)
Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist's Life	3	(12)
The Black Writer and the Southern Experience	15	(7)
"But Yet and Still the Cotton Gin Kept on Working..."	22	(11)
A Talk: Convocation 1972	33	(9)
Beyond the Peacock: The Reconstruction of Flannery O'Connor	42	(18)
The Divided Life of Jean Toomer	60	(6)
A Writer Because of, Not in Spite of, Her Children	66	(5)
Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson	71	(12)
Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View	83	(10)
Looking for Zora	93	(26)
PART TWO	119	(112)
The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?	119	(11)
The Unglamorous but Worthwhile Duties of the Black Revolutionary Artist, or of the Black Writer Who Simply Works and Writes	130	(9)
The Almost Year	139	(3)
Choice: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.	142	(4)
Coretta King: Revisited	146	(12)
Choosing to Stay at Home: Ten Years after the March on Washington	158	(13)
Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Writings of Social Protest	171	(7)
Making the Moves and the Movies We Want	178	(3)
Lulls	181	(18)
My Father's Country Is the Poor	199	(24)
Recording the Seasons	223	(8)
PART THREE	231	(104)
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens	231	(13)
From an Interview	244	(29)
A Letter to the Editor of Ms.	273	(5)
Breaking Chains and Encouraging Life	278	(12)
If the Present Looks Like the Past, What Does the Future Look Like?	290	(23)
Looking to the Side, and Back	313	(7)
To The Black Scholar	320	(6)
Brothers and Sisters	326	(9)
PART FOUR	335	(60)
Silver Writes	335	(3)
Only Justice Can Stop a Curse	338	(5)
Nuclear Madness: What You Can Do	343	(4)
To the Editors of Ms. Magazine	347	(8)
Writing The Color Purple	355	(6)
Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self	361	(10)
One Child of One's Own: A Meaningful Digression within the Work(s)	371	(24)
Publication Acknowledgments	395