Walker, Alice - In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens
I had tried to read this around 2003, but got stuck on Alice Walker's insistence on mentioning "womanism" as a thing somewhat separate from feminism, and as a black thing at that.
I picked it up again last week to alleviate some of the anger I was still feeling about the whole cultural appropriation debate stuff. This time, instead of feeling left out or excluded, I found so much comfort in her knowledge that often feminism fails to address racial issues (and class issues, but that's a whole 'nother post). It isn't that the failures of feminism comfort me; they don't. Feminism is one of the axes of my existence, and while I think the Platonic version would address race and class, in practice, it often doesn't. And I find myself torn between feminism and anti-racism, both of which are very important to me, and that's a very uncomfortable place to be.
It feels as though Alice Walker wrote many of these essays about that divide, specifically to address that divide, to say: This isn't fair. This isn't right. We deserve more. We shouldn't be forced to choose.
There's such a sense of strength in these essays, even when Walker's writing about being insulted by all sorts of people for being black, for being female, for being herself. She feels centered and fully aware of herself; she writes about moments of joy as well as moments of pain, and her anger comes from injustice. From this book, I would love to just sit down and talk with her. She finds strength even in the midst of suicidal despair.
I can't even start to say how much I loved this, and I suspect many of these essays will be reread through the years and grow to be close friends.
I picked it up again last week to alleviate some of the anger I was still feeling about the whole cultural appropriation debate stuff. This time, instead of feeling left out or excluded, I found so much comfort in her knowledge that often feminism fails to address racial issues (and class issues, but that's a whole 'nother post). It isn't that the failures of feminism comfort me; they don't. Feminism is one of the axes of my existence, and while I think the Platonic version would address race and class, in practice, it often doesn't. And I find myself torn between feminism and anti-racism, both of which are very important to me, and that's a very uncomfortable place to be.
It feels as though Alice Walker wrote many of these essays about that divide, specifically to address that divide, to say: This isn't fair. This isn't right. We deserve more. We shouldn't be forced to choose.
There's such a sense of strength in these essays, even when Walker's writing about being insulted by all sorts of people for being black, for being female, for being herself. She feels centered and fully aware of herself; she writes about moments of joy as well as moments of pain, and her anger comes from injustice. From this book, I would love to just sit down and talk with her. She finds strength even in the midst of suicidal despair.
I can't even start to say how much I loved this, and I suspect many of these essays will be reread through the years and grow to be close friends.