In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Prose

by Alice Walker

  This poem (and my sister received the first draft, which is hers alone, and the way I wish her to relate to the poem) went through fifty drafts (at least) and I worked on it, off and on, for five years. This has never happened before or since. I do not know what to say about the way it is constructed other than to say that as I wrote it the lines and words went, on the paper, to a place comparable to where they lived in my head.

  I suppose, actually, that my tremendous response to the poems of William Carlos Williams, Cummings, and Basho convinced me that poetry is more like music--in my case, improvisational jazz, where each person blows the note that she hears--than like a cathedral, with every stone in a specific, predetermined place. Whether lines are long or short depends on what the poem itself requires. Like people, some poems are fat and some are thin. Personally, I prefer the short, thin ones, which are always like painting the eye in a tiger (as Muriel Rukeyser once explained it). You wait until the energy and vision are just right, then you write the poem. If you try to write it before it is ready to be written you find yourself adding stripes instead of eyes. Too many stripes and the tiger herself disappears. You will paint a photograph (which is what is wrong with "Burial") instead of creating a new way of seeing.

  The poems that fail will always haunt you. I am haunted by "Ballad of the Brown Girl" and "Johann" in Once, and I expect to be haunted by "Nothing Is Right" in Revolutionary Petunias. The first two are dishonest, and the third is trite.

  The poem "The Girl Who Died # 2" was written after I learned of the suicide of a student at the college I attended. I learned, from the dead girl's rather guilty-sounding "brothers and sisters," that she had been hounded constantly because she was so "incorrect"; she thought she could be a black hippie. To top that, they tried to make her feel like a traitor because she refused to limit her interest to black men. Anyway, she was a beautiful girl. I was shown a photograph of her by one of her few black friends. She was a little brown-skinned girl from Texas, away from home for the first time, trying to live a life she could live with. She tried to kill herself two or three times before, but I guess the brothers and sisters didn't think it "correct" to respond with love or attention, since everybody knows it is "incorrect" to even think of suicide if you are a black person. And, of course, black people do not commit suicide. Only colored people and Negroes commit suicide. (See "The Old Warrior Terror": Warriors, you know, always die on the battlefield.) I said, when I saw the photograph, that I wished I had been there for her to talk to. When the school invited me to join the Board of Trustees, it was her face that convinced me. I know nothing about boards and never really trusted them; but I can listen to problems pretty well. ... I believe in listening--to a person, the sea, the wind, the trees, but especially to young black women whose rocky road I am still traveling.

  *See "Beauty When the Other Dancer Is the Self"

  1973

  A LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF MS.

  I REALIZED AT THE National Black Feminist Organization conference that it had been much too long since I sat in a room full of black women and, unafraid of being made to feel peculiar, spoke about things that matter to me. We sat together and talked and knew no one would think, or say, "Your thoughts are dangerous to black unity and a threat to black men." Instead, all the women understood that we gathered together to assure understanding among black women, and that understanding among women is not a threat to anyone who intends to treat women fairly. So the air was clear and rang with earnest voices freed at last to speak to ears that would not automatically begin to close. And then to hear Shirley Chisholm speak: to feel all of history compressed into a few minutes and to sing "We love Shirley!"--a rousing indication of our caring that we could not give to Sojourner Truth or Harriet Tubman or Mary McLeod Bethune. To see her so small, so impeccable in dress, in speech, and in logic, and so very black, and to think of her running for President of this country, which has, in every single age, tried to destroy her. It was as if, truly, the faces of those other women were just beneath the skin of Shirley Chisholm's face. And later, at the same general meeting, being one among and with all those black women, I thought of all the questions about us I have been asking myself.

  For four or five years I have been watching the faces of young black men and women as they emerge from the movie houses of this city, their faces straight from Southern black homes and families, which means upright, Christian, striving homes with mothers and fathers who are shown respect. I've watched them, innocence and determination to grow mingling in their bodies, respond to images of black women and men they never have seen before. Watched them stagger, slink, or strut away from the Sweetback flicks ... a doomed look on the faces of the young women, a cruelty or a look of disgust beginning behind the innocence on the faces of the young men. And I have asked myself: Who will stop this slinging of mud on the character of the black woman? Who will encourage the tenderness that seeks to blossom in young black men? Who will stand up and say, "Black women, at least, have had enough!" And I began to feel, at the conference, that, yes, there are black women who will do that.

  And I looked again at Shirley Chisholm's face (which I had never seen before except on television) and was glad she has kept a record of her political and social struggles, because our great women die, often in poverty and under the weight of slander, and are soon forgotten. And I thought of how little we have studied any of our ancestors, but how close to zero has been our study of those who were female.. . and I have asked myself: Who will secure from neglect and slander those women who have kept our image as black women clean and strong for us? And at the conference, I met women who are eager to do this job.

  And of course I thought of Frederick Douglass. And knew that his newspaper would have been pleased to cover our conference, because we are black and we are women and because we intend to be as free as anyone. He understood that it is not incumbent upon the slave to make sure her or his uprising is appropriate or "correct." It is the nature of the oppressed to rise against oppression. Period. Women who wanted their rights did not frighten him, politically or socially, because he knew his own rights were not diminished by theirs. I'm sure he would have sent someone from his newspaper to see what things--abortion, sterilization, welfare rights, women in the black movement, black women in the arts, and so forth--we were talking about. I don't think he would have understood--any more than I do--why no representatives from black magazines and newspapers came. Are not black women black news?

  And then, when I came home, I stood looking at a picture of Frederick Douglass I have on my wall. And I asked myself: Where is your picture of Harriet Tubman, the General? Where is your drawing of Sojourner Truth? And I thought that if black women would only start asking questions like that, they'd soon--all of them--have to begin reclaiming their mothers and grandmothers--and what an enrichment that would be!

  When we look back over our history it is clear that we have neglected to save just those people who could help us most. Because no matter what anyone says, it is the black woman's words that have the most meaning for us, her daughters, because she, like us, has experienced life not only as a black person, but as a woman; and it was different being Frederick Douglass than being Harriet Tubman--or Sojourner Truth, who only "looked like a man," but bore children and saw them sold into slavery.

  I thought of the black women writers and poets whose books--even today--go out of print while other works about all of us, less valuable if more "profitable," survive to insult us with their half-perceived, half-rendered "truths." How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers' names. Yet, we do not know them. Or if we do, it is only the names we know and not the lives.

  And I thought of the mountain of work black women must do. We must work as if we are the last generation capable of work--for it is true that the view we have of the significance of the past will undoubtedly die with us, and future generations will have to stumble in the dark, over ground we should have covered.


  Someone claimed, rhetorically, that we are the only "true queens of the universe." I do not want to be a queen, because queens are oppressive, but even so the thought came to me that any true queen knows the names, words, and actions of the other queens of her lineage and is very sharp about her herstory. I think we might waive the wearing of a crown until we have at least seriously begun our work.

  I thought about friends of mine whose views do not differ very much from mine, but who decided not to come to the conference because of fear. Fear of criticism from other black people (who, I assume, consider silence a sign of solidarity), and fear of the presence of lesbians. The criticism will no doubt be forthcoming, but what can one do about that? Nothing, but continue to work. As for the lesbians--a black lesbian would undoubtedly be a black woman. That seems simple enough. In any case, I only met other black women, my sisters, and valuable beyond measuring, every one of them.

  And we talked and we discussed and we sang for Shirley Chisholm and clapped for Eleanor Holmes Norton and tried to follow Margaret Sloan's lyrics and cheered Flo Kennedy's anecdotes. And we laughed a lot and argued some. And had a very good time.

  1974

  BREAKING CHAINS AND ENCOURAGING LIFE

  Four stories:

  1. AT TWO O'CLOCK in the morning when I was living in Brooklyn, I received a call from a black woman who had recently invited me to read at her school. I had, in fact, spent the night in the house she shared with her third-world woman, nonblack lover, and had had an enjoyable time.

  Among the preliminaries of this conversation was the news that she and her lover had broken up, and did I know I was beautiful and did I know my eyes were sad?

  She had heard I intended to move to San Francisco. She intended to do the same. In fact, intended to "haunt" me. To "camp" on my doorstep.

  I could not advise that, I said.

  Well, in that case, she had been reading my work, and teaching it, and decided I myself was not in it. She implied this was fraud.

  And another thing, why do you write so patronizingly about lesbians?

  What?

  Well, I think you misrepresent black women. I know more about black women than you'll ever know. I think . ..

  I don't give a damn what you think, I said. And hung up.

  2. I am speaking to a class of thirty on feminist aesthetics. A white woman says: I would love to work with black and third-world women, but I'm a separatist.

  A what?

  Well, black and third-world women always seem connected to some man. Since I am a separatist, this means I can't work with them. What do you suggest I do?

  Personally I'm not giving up Stevie Wonder and John Lennon, no matter what, I reply, but you should do whatever you want to do, which obviously is not to work with black and third-world women.

  My daughter, sitting beside me, looks up from her Rosa Guy novel. Mom, she whispers, shocked, there's only one other black woman in here. She knows my motto is "Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your home."

  This lone black woman, no doubt angered at her isolated position in the class, annoyed that both of us, in such a "separatist" environment can count only as diversion and entertainment, attacks me bitterly, as if to obliterate the pain of her own presence.

  3. A lesbian friend who tried on two occasions to "pull me out of the closet" before accepting the friendship I offer, tells me there is a developing split in black lesbian ranks.

  Oh, yeah?

  Yeah. Between black-women-identified women and white-women-identified black women.

  And who judges?

  Well, there are these black women with white women lovers and they bring 'em to meetings and it's just disruptive. We only have so much time and money to spend getting our own shit together, and we end up wasting it discussing them.

  Her present though outgoing lover is a white woman. She met me while I was in an interracial marriage.

  We sigh.

  Two thoughts come to mind. A swaggering one first: Black women are notorious for loving anybody they want to love and some of those they don't. And, less swaggering: Black women love those who love them.

  4. I am doing meditation at a center in Oakland. A new black woman acquaintance, who I hope will become a friend, carries me off to her house afterward.

  She says. Have you seen Conditions: Five, The Black Women's Issue?

  No, I haven't, I say with excitement, where is it?

  I have it, she says.

  Great, I say. Don't let me leave without looking at it.

  You'll be disappointed, she says.

  Why? I ask.

  The writing is terrible.

  Really?

  And it's put together poorly.

  Oh, no!

  And it's full of lesbians.

  Hummmm. Well, don't forget to show it to me.

  But she does forget, still saying as I leave an hour later: You'll be disappointed.

  If I hadn't helped my sister

  They'd have put those chains on me!

  --Niobeth Tsaba, Song of a Sister's Freedom

  One of the most exciting and healthiest things to happen lately in the black community is the coming out of black lesbians. Conditions: Five. The Black Women's Issue (which also includes work by many nonlesbians) reflects this with power, intelligence, and style. There are poems, essays, book reviews (of Shange's Nappy Edges, Wallace's Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, and Lorde's The Black Unicorn) excerpts from journals, and part of a novel in progress. Reading the collection is not unlike seeing women breaking chains with their bare hands.

  "This bullshit should not be encouraged," a black male student and critic declared in a 1975 review of Ann Allen Shockley's lesbian novel, Loving Her, which appeared in the now defunct Black World magazine. One is struck by the use of patriarchal intimidation in this remark, and, since the critic is presumably much younger than Shockley (a librarian for many years at Fisk University), it is surprisingly disrespectful of her life. For surely black women have earned the right to write about anything they please; and to denigrate this right reveals an antipathy to us so vast that all recorded history cannot, apparently, limit it. To say that a black lesbian is writing "bullshit" because she expresses her own perception of existence is as presumptuous as the belief that lesbianism will disappear if black people refuse to "encourage" it.

  In an invaluable essay in Conditions: Five called "The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview" Shockley writes: "Until recently there has been almost nothing written by or about the black lesbian in American literature--a void signifying that the black lesbian was a nonentity in imagination as well as reality. This unique black woman, analogous to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, was seen but not seen because of what the eyes did not wish to behold."

  The "eyes did not wish to behold" women loving women in a primary or sexual way, and so, Shockley writes, even black women writers who might at least have written novels, stories, or even reviews of lesbian work, opted instead to write nothing, or to join those who in various often subtle ways agreed that "this bullshit should not be encouraged." She shows how negatively black lesbians are presented in the work of several contemporary black women authors, and how such depiction reinforces antilesbian stereotypes already prevalent in the black community.

  "It is my belief," writes Shockley, "that those black female writers who could have written well and perceptively enough to warrant publication chose instead to write about black women in a heterosexual milieu. The preference was motivated by the fear of being labeled a lesbian, even if in some cases they were not" (my italics).

  And because of this, and I think Shockley's belief is largely true, many black women writers, whose responsibility is to the truth and to our children (who may, for all we know, be gay or lesbian, as we too may be or become: we're born but we aren't dead), have backed down, have said, by their silence or negative, stereotypical portrayals of black lesbians: "This bullshit should not be encouraged."

  And y
et, as Audre Lorde says in the poem quoted by Gloria Hull at the opening of Conditions: Five:

  Whether we speak or not,

  The machine will crush us to bits--

  and we will also be afraid

  Your silence

  will not

  protect you

  Barbara Smith and Lorraine Bethel make this observation chillingly real in their introduction. As they were compiling materials for this volume in New Haven and Boston, between January 29 and My 28, 1979, twelve black women were systematically sought out and brutally murdered in Boston's third-world communities. "While we were working to create a place for celebration of Black women's lives, our sisters were dying. The sadness, fear, and anger as well as the unforeseen need to do political work around the murders affected every aspect of our lives including work on Conditions: Five. The murder of Black women right where we lived also made crystal clear the .. . need for such a publication and for a Black feminist movement absolutely opposed to violence against us and the taking of our lives on any and all levels."

  One of the most remarkable pieces in Conditions: Five is an excerpt from Beverly Smith's journal that was almost lost to us. It describes her attendance, "masquerading as a nice, straight, middle-class Black 'girl,'" at the stuffy, upper-middle-class wedding of her close friend "J-----."

  She is irretrievably lost to me and I to her. She's getting married and since I'm a dyke I am anathema to her. She's made her feelings on homosexuality clear on several occasions. (I no longer use the terms homosexual or homosexuality to refer to lesbians.)

  Two last things and then I'll stop. Last night I was on the second floor after going to the bathroom (I must have gone four times, I was hiding and trying to maintain my sanity). I went into a bedroom where J----and others of her bridesmaids and Susan (the wife of a friend of H----'s) were talking. J----was talking about what still needed to be done and about her feelings concerning the wedding. Mostly anxieties over whether everything would go well. But at one point she said something to the effect that "It seems strange. We've been together all our lives [her three friends] and after tomorrow we won't be." Her friends assured her that they'd still be a part of her life. Ha! I know better. She'll be H---'s chattel from now on. It occurred to me that celebrating a marriage is like celebrating being sold into slavery. Yes, I'm overgeneralizing (I'm only 90-95% right); but in this case I feel sure.