Beginning of Essay
In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens - Alice Walker When the poet Jean Toomer walked through the South in the early twenties, he discovered a curious thing: black women whose spirituality was so intense, so deep, so unconscious, they were themselves unaware of the ri ....

Middle of Essay
.... sensitive subject. We are presented with an image of black women as helpless beings, and the only form of artistic expression available to them is their daily life. In the ordinary tasks of cooking, sewing, and growing food, tasks on which their survival depended, these women found a way to express the yearnings of the soul for hope and beauty, as well as the desire to be remembered. Unable to read and to write their own stories, these generations of mothers and grandmothers, their own lives became their greatest work of art. Walker explores the theories and practices of feminists and feminism, incorporating what she calls the "womanist" traditio ....