In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose | 
| Author: Alice Walker
Publisher: Harvest Books
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
Buy New: $9.26
You Save: $6.74 (42%)
New (20) Used (15) from $6.71
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 60533
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 418
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0156028646
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5409
EAN: 9780156028646
ASIN: 0156028646
Publication Date: May 19, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New, great condition
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In this, her first collection of nonfiction, Alice Walker speaks out as a
black woman, writer, mother, and feminist in thirty-six pieces ranging
from the personal to the political. Among the contents are essays about
other writers, accounts of the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the
antinuclear movement of the 1980s, and a vivid memoir of a scarring
childhood injury and her daughter’s healing words.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
A World Of Differnts Meanings June 17, 2008
I often disagree with some things a writer chooses to share but those are small things that prove your thinking about what you've read and not just scanned the material. The one that stands out the most after 20 years is the piece on Cuba. Each piece however took me somewhere beyond my own thoughts. It is more than well written, it is thought provoking and at times peaceful.
Alice Walker is allways wonderful June 4, 2008
and this is not exception. Her honesty, her heart and her story telling is excellent as ever. May she bless us with many, many more stories.
amazing December 7, 2007
Alice Walker is insightful and thorough in her examination of literature. I especially enjoy her piece about Flannery O'Connor.
A must read for Empowered women! August 26, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book helped me gain my voice. I love it so much -- I have two copies of it and I would still not be willing to loan one out. Alice Walker is a powerful visual writer and a Gift to the Womanist Academy!
The Loss of Black Creativity Due To Slavery December 1, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
In her essay concerning post-Reconstruction African-American women, Alice Walker seeks to put a human face on what Americans may otherwise only remember as an unfortunate scar on our glorious history. She asks, "Who were the Saints? These crazy, loony, pitiful women?" And in answering herself, she replies in repetition, "our mothers and grandmothers." These are the human faces to which she has attributed all that is contemporary Black America.
"Moving to music not yet written," Walker's image of the former female slave is one, not necessarily of a battered laborer, nor of a heifer being kept only because of her ability to breed valuable livestock, but rather as an artist ahead of her time. These women made beauty while amidst horrible conditions. These women were not merely ex-slaves, but they were "Poets, Novelists, Essayists, and Short-Story Writers" whose potential was never met, and dreams were never realized. For this reason, Walker attempts to embolden and even mobilize African-American women with the responsibility of realizing the potential of black creativity denied their ancestors.
Walker asks, "Do you have a genius of a great-great-grandmother who died under some ignorant and depraved white overseers lash?" What an amazing question to ask. How many geniuses and artists were slain by the horror of slavery? Americans spend a lot of time and energy thinking about the economic, political, and social restrictions slavery imposed on African Americans, but I have never even heard elusions to the loss of black creativity due to slavery. I too have given more thought to the socioeconomic inequality within black America than I've ever given to the stifling of their creative ability. Perhaps, we should give this idea more thought, for it was the efforts of these "poets" in everyday life that transported black women to where they are today, and have arguably elevated the intellect, creativity, and soul of an entire nation.
Thought provoking; this is an essential read for anyone interested in understanding the effects of slavery, especially those effects that go beyond our typical understanding of oppression.
|
|
|
