Vocabulary

Vibrant (adj): full of energy

 She has a vibrant personality

★ Synonym: lively, spirited
☆ Antonym: dull, boring

Medium (n): materials for an artist

 Picasso used several mediums in his drawings

 I prefer to use a thick medium when using watercolors
★ Synonym: paper, watercolor, chalk

Profusely (adv): in great quantities

 She profusely saw tulips in the garden

 His nose was bleeding profusely
 She bakes profusely when bored
 She profusely apologized for her mistake
★ Synonym: abundantly, extensively, richly
☆ Antonym: few, barely

Conception (n): mental formation of ideas

 Her conception of the topic was a bit off

 You must know both the biographical and historical backgrounds to have a well-rounded
conception of a work of literature
★ Synonym: idea, plan
☆ Antonym: misunderstanding, reality

Ingenious (adj): clever

 Their solution to the puzzle is ingenious

★ Synonym: creative, smart, inventive
☆ Antonym: uncreative, ordinary, dumb

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In Search Of Our Mother’s Garden
Author: Alice Walker
- In her poetry, essays, and novels, Alice Walker has celebrated the endurance, the strength, and the
creativity of African American women like her mother -unsung woman who carried immense
familial and social burdens even as they struggled against low status and the complete lack of
recognition- (Purpose of writing)
- Her mother labored side by side with her father in the fields, cared for their eight children (she was
the 6th), and still never failed wherever they were living to cultivate a large and beautiful flower
garden.
- Her mother's hard work and determination to enrich her own life have served as an inspiration to
Walker throughout her career

Literary Focus: Personal Essay

- There are two types of essays:
 informal essays, also called personal essays
 formal essays
- personal / informal essay: a short prose (spoken, not metrical) work of nonfiction that explores a
topic in a personal way / takes a personal look at some topic.
- They show how the individual experience of the writer connects with larger more universal
concerns, and they tap deeply into the emotional life of a writer.
- Qualities of a personal essay: Personal details and interpretations of her own experience

Genre: Nonfiction, personal essay

- This is an excerpt from the second part of an essay about the creative spirit of African American
women.
- the first part talked about: how they were slaves, laborers, mothers, and still are able to be creative,
artistic, poets, and educated. / The slavery, life conditions, bad, tough circumstances and
atmosphere.
- Walker explores 2 questions raised in the first part of the essay by examining her own mother's
life:
 what did it mean for black women of previous generations to be artists?
 How were black women able to be creative despite limited opportunity and freedom
- Walker takes her mother as a case study for all African American women’s creativity.

Point Of View: 1st Person Point Of View

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What were the 2 questions Walker wanted an answer to?
1- Where did African American women get the time, despite being overworked and not being
educated, to express their creativity and care for it?
2- How did they inherit their creative spirit from their mothers and grandmothers etc?
Essentially, she was wondering about her own creativity, and how she inherited it from her mother.

What is the purpose of the author writing this essay?

- To discover the creative spirit of black woman
- Prove how African Americans maintain that spirit of creativity, raised generations, and created
artwork
“It is to my mother and all our mothers who who were not famous that I want in search of the secret of
what has fed the creative spirit that the black woman has inherited and that pops out in wild and
unlikely places to this day”

Describe the personality of Walker’s mother.

Physically:
- A large, soft, loving-eyed woman
Character:
- Rarely impatient at home, but her quick, violent temper, and shown only few times a year with the
landlord, that suggested that her children did not need to go to school
- Helpful
- Understands the importance of education despite not being educated herself (makes her children
read)
- Strong
- Determined
- Hardworking
- Patient
- Gentle

How was Walker’s mother hard worker and productive?

- She made all the towels and sheets, and all the clothes they wore
- She spent the summer canning vegetables and fruits
- She spent the winter evenings making quilts enough to cover their bed sheets
- helps the father in the fields (“beside, not behind”)

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How was Walker’s mother always busy?
- There were never a moment for her to sit down

What does Walker want to discover?

- She wants to discover the creative spirit
“did my overworked mother have time to know or care about feeding the creative spirit”

Why was walker so impressed with the quilt she saw in the Smithsonian?
- Because a lot of the artists are black, poor, and unknown, yet made artwork such as Persian rugs
and Indian saris
“It is considered rare, beyond price. Though it follows no known pattern of quilt-making… Below
this quilt I saw a note that says it was made by ‘an anonymous Black woman in Alabama, a
hundred years ago’”

What main ideas the “quilt example” support?

- Creative work and art exist in places we don’t expect, and is going to us by artists we may never
know
- We should not only look at famous people, but you should look at normal, simple people too

[Change this to “slaves” and “the wives and daughters of share-croppers.”], What do Walker’s
suggested changes reveal about her beliefs?
- Virginia said some genius women are from the working women who were not discouraged, black
woman were also poor and discouraged

How did Alice Walker’s mother express her creativity / show herself as an artist?
- By always growing flowers and gardens (“she planted ambitious gardens with over 50 different
varieties of plants that bloom profusely from early March until late November”)
- storytelling

How did the mother take care of her garden?

“Before she left home for the fields she watered her flowers chopped up the grass and laid out new beds
when she returned from the fields she might divide clumps of bulbs dig a cold pits uproot and replant
roses or prune branches from her taller bushes trees until night came and it was too dark to see”

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Despite being busy she took care of it, and was known as the grower of flowers / having a green thumb
over three countries, because of her creativity with her flowers, adorning the memories of her children in
poverty through a screen of blooms (so poverty wasn't an excuse that stopped her from living her creative
spirit / sparks)

Description of her gardens:

“so brilliant with colors so original and its design so magnificent with life and creativity”
It got to the point that even strangers drive to their house to ask to stand or walk among her mother's arts
and praise her because of the rocky soil she landed on yet still turned into a garden

Description of her mood when working on the gardens:

“I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant almost to the point of
being invisible, except to God, as she is involved in work her soul must have ordering the universe and
the image of her personal conception of beauty”

How was Walker affected by her mother?

- she handed her down the creative spirit
- her storytelling inspired her to become an author
- she passed down respect for the possibilities and their will to grasp them

What were some of the flower types the mother planted?

- Sunflowers
- Petunias
- Roses
- Dahlias
- forsythia
- spirea
- delphiniums
- verbena

Walker describes her mothers creativity with flowers, how does these details support the topic -
black women have inherited a “vibrant creative spirit”
- Even though her mother had limited opportunities for expression she found creative outlet through
gardening

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How do passersby react to the mother’s garden? Why?
- They often asked to stand or walk among the flowers, because they knew the garden is art

Why did Alice Walker write the poem?

- She wrote the poem for the uneducated black women like her mother
- appreciating them holding on even in very simple ways for a very long time despite the struggles
and slavery hindering and intruding upon them in so many ways, and them being artists still has
been a daily part of their lives
- For the woman who literally covered the holes in our walls with some flowers (“literally” because
her mother was literally a gardener who filled her memories and poverty with beautiful flowers in
their home)
- She shared this poem as a tribute and honor her mom and all black women who despite the
struggles pushed down the respect and creativity to their children
Poem:

 With fists as well as – hands: when they walk they were courage
 How they buttered down – doors: opened opportunities
 And ironed: ironed for their kids school clothes
 How they led – armies: what mothers do is similar to leading an army
 Booby-trapped: the kitchen had bombs

- The poem shows the importance of education

- All the artists mentioned and referred to have their own creative spark of art and creativity

What did Alice Walker mean by “in search of my mother’s garden, if found my own”?
- She meant that by searching her mother’s creativity she found her own creativity
- Her mom was a storyteller and Alice Walker was affected / inspired by that and became an author
and she only found that out when conducting this research and writing about this case study about
her mother (“yet so many of these stories that I write that we all right are my mother stories
through the years of listening to my mother stories of her life…I have absorbed not only these
stories themselves but something of the manner in which she spoke something of the urgency that
involves the knowledge that her stories they call life must be recorded”)

Why did Alice Walker Refer to Famous, White artists (British and Scottish):
She refers to these creatives as proof because even these white creatives said that the working class must
have creativity and their own private space and time to show it. She used these white people because

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some might be still biased against Africans, so she is smartly mentioning known white artists, then
‘’changing’’ their names and mentioning black artists, as well as compare:
- The word working class to slaves and the wives and daughters of sharecroppers.
- Emily Bronte and Robert Burns to Zora Hurston and Richard Wright
- Witch that is being ducked or woman possessed by devils to sainthood.
- Wise woman selling herbs to African American root workers
- Remarkable men who had mothers.
Some of these creatives were: Virginia Woolf, Emily Bronte, Robert Burns, and Jane Austen.

Who are some other African American artists mentioned?

- Ma Rainey, which was the first great African American professional Blues vocalist and is
considered to be the mother of Blues music
- Bessie Smith who is one of the greatest of blues singers, she was known in her lifetime as empress
of the blues
She mentions them and then says that their works retained the creators name blasting forth from the
artist's mouth but no song or poem would bear her mother's name if she hadn't written about her
herself
- Robert Flack who is a popular African American singer and songwriter
- Phillis Wheatley who is an American poet born in Africa and brought to America and slavery he is
referred to as the first african american poet
She mentions them to back up her guess / prediction that behind all creative African Americans was a
mother who was also creative / was also an artist, and perhaps the children’s biological life is their mother
signature made clear, suggesting that mothers might have played a similar role to their children creativity
wise they were motivated encouraged and passed the creative spirit to their daughters

What is “Sainthood”?
In the early part of this essay (Part 1) Walker talks about certain black women in the South called Saints,
who were intensely spiritual and these women were driven to madness by their creativity as they couldn't
express and could find no release for.
What are the main points of the essay?

 Main point #1: the writer goes to her mother to find / understand the secret of the creative spirit
inherited by black African American women
Proof / Evidence / Backup: Alice Walker Herself
 Main point #2: she finds a lot of anonymous black women have left us art, such as the quilt from the
Smithsonian

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Proof / Evidence / Backup: she proves they were creative despite being slaves and busy in the era of
slavery and maintained their creative spirits and were smart by the quilt hanged in an institution and
considered rare (Washington DC), it was made by an anonymous black woman from Alabama, and
she concluded that many anonymous black women have created precious art a long time ago (the
quilt was made 100 years ago)
 Main point #3: she realizes that her mothers stories influenced her own writing and that her mothers
greatest creativity was her garden / many of the writer's mother’s stories inspired the writers on
writing
★ “And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the
creative spark”
 Main point #4: the mother's greatest art was her garden which explains the significance of the title
 Main point #5: the poem pays tribute to black mothers who are uneducated yet fought for the
education of their children

What is the main idea of the essay?

- Black women have always made art using whatever material they had available, those women
were real artists, and they have handed down that spark of creativity to their daughters

Simile: “and so our mothers and grandmothers have more often than not anonymously handed on the
creative spark the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see”
African American mothers couldn't even dream of being freely creative, they only successively made their
kids inherit the creative spirit they couldn't freely live.
Compares the inherited creative spirit to a seed of a flower
“Whatever she planted as if by magic”

Metaphor: “like a sealed letter they could not plainly read”

The secret of the creative spirits was within the mothers, but they weren't educated to be able to
understand it or read it
Compares the creative spirit to a sealed letter they couldn't read because they weren't educated enough but
knew the importance of nonetheless

Allusion: “like Mem, a character in the third life of Grange Copeland, my mother adorned with flowers
whatever shabby house we were forced to live in.”
She alludes to her first novel novel published in 1970 and compares her mother to a character in it

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Response & Analysis
Q1: In this personal, Walker relates her personal experience to a larger, universal issue. What is
that issue?
Walker’s mother’s life wasn’t easy, as she was working side by side with her father in the fields as a
slave, and had to take care of her children, their education, their clothes, food etc. while not being
educated herself.
Yet she led an inspiring life for her children, as she always created magnificent gardens that beautified
whatever small cottage they were living in and mastered the art of storytelling which influenced Walker
greatly.
Worked in the fields, provided her family’s needs, raised 8 children, fought prejudice to give them a better
quality of life and education.
She relates details from her personal life to support her idea about creativity, specifically the creativity
inherited by African American women despite their struggles and non-recognition.

Q2: What do you think Walker has learned from her mother the storyteller? from her mother the
gardener?
Walker wishes to discover the secret of how African American women maintained their creative spirit
despite their struggles and hard circumstances, and how did they get the time and knowledge to do so
despite being busy and uneducated.
She also wonders how they inherited their creativity from their mothers and grandmothers.
She does that by examining her mother’s life and the lives of other women like her.
Examine the inherited creative spirit / spark of African American women.
How could they (African American women) pass that creative spark over generations.
She learned how to tell good stories and to appreciate beautiful details

Q3: In the last five lines of the poem, Walker presents a paradox. Explain it.
Walker’s mother mainly expresses her creativity in two ways:
- Storytelling
- Planting and gardening
Growing her own elaborate garden / telling stories.
Although the mothers were uneducated, they valued the importance to make books available for their
children

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Q4: What does Walker mean when she says she found her own garden while searching for her
mother's?
When Walker’s mother works in the garden, she is “radiant, almost to the point of being invisible”, she
has a green thumb that turns everything into a creative garden, she creates art and beauty, and is involved
physically and mentally in her work.
She becomes radiant and in a good state of mind.
She found her own creativity, while searching for her mother’s creativity

Q5: In this personal essay. Walker relates her personal experience to a larger, universal issue. What
is the issue?
The issue Walker discusses in her personal essay is that of the acknowledgement of the creative spirit of
African American women, and their fight to make their children’s lives better.
She uses details from her mother’s life to support her research question / philosophical assumption about
how creative sparks have been passed down from one generation to another of black women.
Personal: Uses details from her own mother’s life.
Issue: how did they pass that creative spark.

Q6: In a key passage on page 1 106, Walker uses a metaphor and a simile to describe how African
American women handed down their "creative spark" over the generations. What are these
imaginative comparisons between two very different things? (Can you think of others she might
have used?
Metaphor: “Handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see”
Simile: “Like a sealed letter they could not plainly read”
First, Walker compares the creative spark inherited by black women from their mothers as a seed, the start
of something, they themselves never thought of living their creativity freely without the bars of slavery.
Second, Walker compares that same creative spark as a sealed letter in which the mothers couldn’t read
themselves, indicating that although they weren’t educated, they could simply feel and work by their
creative spark in a natural, mysterious way, without having the knowledge their children must have.
She didn’t expect her daughter to become a lecturer and a creative writer, she only passed down the
creative spark, not knowing what it’ll yield.
Yeast in the dough can be used too, as it is hidden and unseen, just like the seed that grows the tree.
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Wrapped gift can be used instead of sealed letter, as it is covered too, and you don’t know what’s inside.

Q7: What do you think Walker the writer has learned from her mother the storyteller? from her
mother the gardener?
From her mother’s storytelling, Walker learned how to write herself and was influenced in her own
writing, while from her mother’s gardening, she learns about the inheritance of the creative spark and how
people show their artistry in multiple, diverse ways.
Love and appreciation of beauty, writing and engaging readers with details, finding creativity.

Q8: In the last five lines of the poem on the opposite page, Walker presents a paradox, an apparent
contradiction. State the paradox in your own words, and tell what kind of knowledge you think
Walker is talking about.
Paradox: “How they knew what we must know… without knowing a page of it themselves”
This contradiction says that despite being uneducated, the African American mothers were determined
that their children be educated, so the knowledge Walker is referring to here is education, how their
mothers strived to have an education for their children ad realized the importance of knowledge despite
not knowing any of that knowledge themselves.
Despite being uneducated themselves, they realized the importance of knowledge and education, and
made it possible for their children.

Q9: What do you think Walker means when she says she found her own "garden" in her process of
searching for her mother's?
Walker’s own “garden” is writing literature (essayist, novelist, author, poet), as she found her passion for
writing while conducting the examination of her mother’s own artistic way expressing her creativity and
writing about it.
Her own garden is writing literature.

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