In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

Published in 1983, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose is a collection composed of 36 separate pieces written by Alice Walker. The essays, articles, reviews, statements, and speeches were written between 1966 and 1982. Many are based on her understanding of "womanist" theory. Walker defines "womanist" at the beginning of the collection as "A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mother to female children and also a woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women's culture. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender." In addition to writing about womanhood and creativity, Walker addresses subjects such as nuclear weapons, anti-Semitism, and the Civil Rights Movement. In a 1984 review of the collection, Lynn Munro noted that: "Reading these essays not only gives one a clearer sense of Alice Walker but also countless insights into the men and women who have touched her life." As Munro put it, Walker "captures the voices of unsung heroines" with whom she has crossed paths. Part I Essays in In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens Part I: "Saving the Life That Is Your Own: The Importance of Models in the Artist's Life" "The Black Writer and the Southern Experience" "But Yet and Still the Cotton Gin Kept on Working…" "A Talk: Convocation 1972" "Beyond the Peacock: The Reconstruction of Flannery O'Connor" "The Divided Life of Jean Toomer" "A Writer Because of, Not in Spite of, Her Children" "Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson" "Zora Neale Hurston: A Cautionary Tale and a Partisan View" "Looking for Zora" "Bash the Whites" Within these essays, She speaks about her search for early black writers such as Rebecca Jackson. She speaks of unsung heroines whom she has come into contact with who wish to tell their stories; for example Mrs. Winson Hudson. Hudson, the director of a Headstart center, wished to tell her story so that people would know "the agitation she caused in her community…was not for herself or for any one group but for everybody in the county". However, of all the writers she introduces, Zora Neale Hurston becomes a focal part in this section of essays.