In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens

by Alice Walker

  In any case, the duty of the writer is not to be tricked, seduced, or goaded into verifying by imitation or even rebuttal, other people’s fantasies. In an oppressive society it may well be that all fantasies indulged in by the oppressor are destructive to the oppressed. To become involved in them in any way at all is, at the very least, to lose time defining yourself.

  To isolate the fantasy we must cleave to reality, to what we know, we feel, we think of life. Trusting our own experience and our own lives; embracing both the dark self and the light.

  *The recent discovery of Harriet E. Wilson’s 1859 novel, Our Nig, which predates Brown’s novel by several years, makes her our first known black novelist. Her story is also, interestingly, about the life of a woman of biracial parents: the mother white, the father black. However, possession of a lighter skin fails to exalt her condition as a black indentured servant in a hostile white, middle-class Northern household before the Civil War.

  **For instance, a few years ago I was invited to address a conference in Atlanta called “The Southern Woman: From Myth to Modern Times.” When I received the brochure I felt sick: on the cover, yes indeed, there was a tiny black woman’s head, sandwiched between a white woman’s head (on top, of course) and an Asian woman’s head (on the bottom). On page three or four, a larger picture of an exquisitely dressed black black woman appeared. In between, however, and completely overwhelming these two, was picture after picture of white women. How could I possibly address such a tokenist crowd? Once in Atlanta, I expressed my feeling to one of the black women on the committee that had invited me (a yellow-skinned, wonderfully funny woman who kept us both in giggles), and she dragged me around the floor of the Atlanta Historical Society, where I was scheduled to speak. Pointing to the same women’s pictures on the walls that had been printed in the brochure, she said: “This one is black, and this one; that one, and all those over there.” “All those over there” referred to a photograph of the Atlanta Ladies’ Auxiliary, circa 1912, all wives of Atlanta’s leading black men. Only one of the dozen or so women could pass, in the photograph, for black, and she might have been white, with a tan. I could not resist commenting on the hundred years of struggle that went into “integrating” places like the Atlanta Historical Society, only to be unable, at struggle’s end, to tell the difference.

  1982

  LOOKING TO THE SIDE, AND BACK

  FROM THE TIME I was two years old, until I was six, my best friend was a little girl exactly my age, whose name was Cassie Mae Terrell. Everyone called her “Sister.” Sister Terrell. We looked like sisters: with gleaming brown skin and bright dark eyes—with plenty of shining, springy hair, which our mothers decorated with large satin bows … Sister Terrell and I used to spend the night at each other’s house, and we would giggle half the night away.

  When I was six, Sister and her family moved to New Jersey, and I suffered my first separation trauma. I tried to encourage my father to move to New Jersey, but he wouldn’t. For a long time I held him responsible, poor man, for my loss of Sister Terrell—whom I was not to see again for twenty years And whom I didn’t forget for a single year.

  Throughout grade school, high school, and college, I had close friends like Sister Terrell. I loved them deeply and loyally—and always with the fear that they’d be taken away. And in so many cases, they were. When next I saw Sister Terrell, for example, she had been married for years to a man who literally kept her from eating. So that when her family finally went to rescue her, she was so weak and malnourished they had to carry her off in their arms. She was in this condition when I saw her again. Gone the gleaming skin and bright dark eyes. Gone the spring from her plentiful hair—in fact, gone a good bit of the plentiful hair.

  One reason I had loved her was that I love, simply love, to giggle, and love to hear giggling. And Sister Terrell, at five and six, was an incomparable giggler. Her giggle was one of the best sounds I ever heard in the world. How could anyone, for any reason, wish to stop it?

  And yet—she giggled no more.

  On my desk there is a picture of me when I was six—dauntless eyes, springy hair, optimistic satin bow and all—and I look at it often; I realize I am always trying to keep faith with the child I was. The child I was thought the women in our local church held together the world. Often kind beyond understanding, sometimes shrewish, stubborn, willfully obtuse, but always there, with their dimes and quarters, their spotless children and beloved husbands, building up the church, first, and the local school, second, for the benefit of the community. The child that I was rarely saw individualistic behavior, and when I did see it, for a long time I could understand it only as rejection of community, rather than the self-affirmation it very often was.

  The men in my immediate community seemed to love and appreciate their wives; and if the wife had more initiative and energy than the husband, this was not held against her. My father loved my mother’s spunk and her inability to lie when asked a direct question. He was himself innately easygoing and disinclined to waste any part of life in argument, and with a mind that easily turned any question asked of him into a “story.”

  This is what I remember; but surely this memory is too good to be entirely true.

  While I was in college I became fascinated by the way women I knew remained loyal to men who had long since ceased being loyal to them, or even thought about being loyal to them. Many black women, myself among them, assumed we had a right to be loved and treated well. We did not, fortunately, limit ourselves to any category or group, even if we were inclined to do so. We wanted love, respect, admiration, and moral support. We did not spurn getting these things wherever they could be found. Many black women, however, were reduced to the condition of grumbling after some anonymous black man on the street as he strolled along beside what he loved, respected, admired, and sometimes supported—and it was often not a woman, and very often not black.

  Many of these women find themselves hating lesbians because in a sense the lesbian has “gotten away clean.” She isn’t concerned about what black men do; she can even view some of their behavior as amusing, if absurd—and, in fact, frequently and unfortunately, copies it. There is a hatred of women of color who marry or establish relationships with white men because in addition to the very real historical weight such unions must bear, there is just a general resentment of unformulaic joy. A rigidity has set in; the same vital instinct to “preserve the race and culture” from dilution through intermarriage—or, where lesbians are concerned, through extinction—causes a narrowing of the range of choice. The result is that only in great stress—and often deliberately brutal isolation—are a hundred somewhat stunted flowers allowed to bloom; while the one flower that is truly desired (the married, black, heterosexual couple) is often watered with the tears of conformity and compromise—and is, consequently, unhealthy.

  In 1973 I was keynote speaker at a symposium at Radcliffe called “The Black Woman: Myths and Realities.” It was to that gathering of the crème de la crème of black educated women in America (some two hundred) that I delivered a speech I’d written especially for black women, called “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens.” It is largely about the tenacity of the artistic spirit among us, from a historical perspective. Many women wept, they later told me, as I read it, and they gave me, in the words of the Radcliffe Quarterly, which later published the essay, “a tumultuous standing ovation.”

  Later there was a panel discussion and, still high from my speech, I looked forward to an exchange among all of us that would be more than a sharing of history and survivalist emotion.

  June Jordan and I were sitting together in the audience. Four or five women were on stage. One was a psychologist, one a well-known actress, one a Civil Rights lawyer. Every one was something. I was so excited!

  June and I had often talked between ourselves about the plight of young black women who were killing themselves at an alarming (to us) rate. We thought this should be brought before our sisters. In fact, the week befo
re, I had visited Sarah Lawrence (where I was at the time a member-of-the-board-of-trustees impersonator) and had been told in grisly detail of the suicide of one young woman. She had been ridiculed by the black men on campus because she dated white guys (meanwhile, these black guys dated white girls and each other). She couldn’t take it. She killed herself. That same week, a young Oriental girl had jumped to her death from a window at Radcliffe. And from all sides I had been hearing how impossible it was becoming to be a young woman of color. It appeared that any kind of nonconformity was not permitted.

  What occurred when June and I brought all this up, however, was nothing short of incredible. There was no response whatsoever to the increased suicide rate among young women of color. Instead, we were treated to a lecture on the black woman’s responsibilities to the black man. I will never forget my sense of horror and betrayal when one of the panelists said to me (and to the rest of that august body of black women gathered there): “The responsibility of the black woman is to support the black man; whatever he does.”

  It occurred to me that my neck could be at that minute under some man’s heel, and this woman would stroll by and say, “Right on.”

  I burst into the loudest tears I’ve ever shed. And though I soon dried my face, I didn’t stop crying inside for . . Maybe I haven’t stopped yet. But that’s okay; what I’m crying about is worth it.

  But a really fascinating thing happened around my crying: many of the women blamed me for crying! I couldn’t believe it. They came over to me, one or two at a time, and said:

  “I understand what you are trying to say …” (I wasn’t trying, I muttered through clenched teeth, I said it; you just didn’t listen.) “but don’t let it get to you!”

  Or: “Why would you let anyone make you cry?!”

  Not one of them ever said a word about why young women of color were killing themselves. They could take the black woman as invincible, as she was portrayed to some extent in my speech (what they heard was the invincible part), but there was no sympathy for struggle that ended in defeat. Which meant there was no sympathy for struggle itself—only for “winning.”

  I was reminded of something that had puzzled me about the response of black people to Movement people in the South. During the seven years I lived in Mississippi, I never knew a Movement person (and I include myself) who wasn’t damaged in some way from having to put her or his life, principles, children, on the line over long, stressful periods. And this is only natural. But there was a way in which the black community could not look at this. I remember a young boy who was shot through the neck by racist whites, and almost died. When he recovered, he was the same gentle, sweet boy he’d always been, but he hated white people, which at that time didn’t fit in with black people’s superior notion of themselves as people who could consistently turn the other cheek. Nobody ever really tried to incorporate the new reality of this boy’s life. When they spoke of him it was as if his life stopped just before the shot.

  I knew a young girl who “desegregated” the local white high school in her small town. No one, except her teachers, spoke to her for four years. There was one white guy—whom she spoke of with contempt—who left love notes in her locker. This girl suffered acute anxiety; so that when she dragged herself home from school every day, she went to bed, and stayed there until the next morning, when she walked off, ramrod straight, to school. Even her parents talked only about the bravery, never about the cost.

  It was at the Radcliffe symposium that I saw that black women are more loyal to black men than they are to themselves, a dangerous state of affairs that has its logical end in self-destructive behavior.

  But I also learned something else:

  The same panelist who would not address the suicide rate of young women of color also took the opportunity to tell me what she thought my “problem” was. Since I spoke so much of my mother, she said my problem was that I was “trying to ‘carry’ my mother, and the weight is too heavy.”

  June, who was sitting beside me, and who was angry but not embarrassed by my tears, put her arms around me and said:

  “But why shouldn’t you carry your mother; she carried you, didn’t she?”

  That is perfection in a short response.

  I had to giggle. And the giggle and the tears and the holding and the sanctioning of responsibility to those we love and those who have loved us is what I know will see us through.

  1979

  TO THE BLACK SCHOLAR

  [I wrote the following memo to the editors of the Black Scholar in response to an article that appeared in the 1979 March/April issue written by Dr. Robert Staples and titled “The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists.” The editors considered the memo both too “personal” and too “hysterical” to publish. They suggested change, and I withdrew it.]

  IT WILL NOT DO any good—and is a waste of time—to attack Ntozake Shangé and Michele Wallace, since they are not, in fact, attacking you. They are affirming themselves and remarking on the general condition of black life as they know it, which they are entitled to do, middle-class black women or not. Whatever flaws exist in their vision or in their works (and there are some), there is also a sizable element of truth that black women and men all over the country recognize. (Not simply us “angry black feminists” who are in the women’s movement anyway, according to Staples, not because we are intelligent, sensitive, and self-respecting, but because we have been called to the aid of white feminists to put black males “in their place.” A sad and scurrilous insult to black women liberationists the world over, and one designed, in this essay, to produce more heat than light.) That element of truth is that, because of sexism (as much as racism, generally, and capitalism, yes) black women and men (who, despite all “isms,” own their own souls, I hope) are at a crisis in their relationship with each other. There is hatred, dislike, distrust between us. Should this continue, we can say good-bye to the black peoplehood our myths and legends, struggles and triumphs have promised us.

  Instead of arguing, at once, about whether there is or is not sexism in the black community (and how could our community possibly be different from every other in that one respect), look around you. Look at the black men and women that you know. Look at your family. Look at your brothers—and their wives. Look at your sisters—and their husbands. Look at all those relatives you admire who are not tied up this way. Look at the children. “Strong black women are not perceived as feminine in this culture.” Are your daughters weak? Do your sons think the color black itself too “strong” to be feminine? What does this mean? Look at what we are told: We are told, for example, that many black women are in fact alone and unhappy. Yet Shangé and Wallace are criticized for saying we should learn to enjoy it.

  Look hard at yourself. Look hard at how you feel, really, about the people among whom fate so indifferently dropped you. Would you feel better as someone else? Look at what we actually do to each other. Look at what we actually say. Look about you as if there were no white people about, whom you have been wishing to impress. Know that if we fail to impress each other, we’ve lost something precious that we once had.

  Now you are in good condition to see Ntozake Shangé’s play.* Excellent shape to hoist a beer (you always need something, watching relatives) and read Michele Wallace’s book. Try not to think how successful they are. Try to blot out how much money Shangé has made. Don’t be pissed off at how beautifully she writes, or with what courage and vulnerability. Resist the temptation to blame her for all those audiences from Marin and Scarsdale. Remember if you can that she didn’t know they were coming.

  Think big.

  We have been a People.

  What are we now?

  And for how long?

  Having said this, and having, I hope, made it clear that I do not find the Staples article at all useful, except as a reminder of how far, still, we have to go (apparently the whole way), let me add to it.

  One of my own great weaknesses, which I am beginnin
g to recognize more clearly than ever around the Michele Wallace book, is a deep reluctance to criticize other black women. I am much more comfortable praising them. Surely there is no other group more praiseworthy, but on the other hand, no other group is more deserving of justice, and good criticism must be, I think, simple justice.

  In Michele Wallace’s book, there are many good things, things that (though not as original as she thinks) can be very helpful to us, if we will hear them. For example, it is really true that unless you are very old and fat, you risk being both insulted and assaulted in any black ghetto neighborhood in America. Black men speak to us like dogs: “Hey, Brown Coat!” “Come here, Black Jacket!” “Hey, girl! Cutie! Won’t speak, huh?! What you need is a good fucking! Bitch.” And these were all things addressed to me while attempting to get my shopping done in the past two days. Try respecting people who talk to you like that. Look at what we are laughing at on television: it is true, as Wallace points out, that black men made it painfully clear that, as Redd Foxx articulated it, they would rather have a Raquel Welch in the bedroom than a Shirley Chisholm in the White House. What could be more sexist and more pathetic? And look at the ignorance of black men about black women. Though black women have religiously read every black male writer that came down the pike (usually presenting black females as witches and warlocks), few black men have thought it of any interest at all to read black women. As far as they’re concerned, they have the whole picture. In this respect, Michele Wallace is also guilty. She points to male ignorance throughout the book, yet for her own research she chose mainly white and black male writers. And though this was pointed out to her before the book was published, she considered the male version of reality enough. Though she tossed in Ntozake Shangé, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, and Nikki Giovanni at the end, it is a puzzle to the reader what we are to make of them, since the stereotypes she attempts to apply to each woman cannot possibly fit creative, moving, thoughtful, and evolving human beings, not to mention human beings who have the added possibilities that come from being black women.