My Mother's Garden

This week's article is dedicated to my own mother, Minnie Lou Harris, who passed from this life on Christmas Eve, 1999. As I tried to construct this essay, even in the midst of the freshness of my own grieving, I am reminded of the need to celebrate her life. I have been constructing this essay, over and over again... in the wee hours of the morning, while at work, even while driving, and am still uncertain as to its structure. What do I say about Mother that is not filled with cliches and is, nevertheless, celebratory? How do I write about my mother's life in a column on African American women's literature? What things do I highlight about her life that will be respected, and maybe even appreciated by my Suite101 audience? To answer these questions, I've decided to go the route that I know best... I've decided to seek the support of literature.

Alice Walker, in her essay entitled "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens" from her collection of essays entitled the same, discusses and celebrates our mothers and foremothers as artists whose talents were repressed by our experiences in this country. She discusses African American women whose art may or may not be manifested in areas that may not be easily recognized as art or by others who attribute value to art. African American women of our mothers' generation were not given the opportunities or the arenas in which to nurture or develop their artistic abilities. Walker writes:

How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a black person to read or write? (Walker, 234)

While many African American women of previous generations may not have found ways to express their talents, and were, as a result, driven to what appeared to be states of madness, many women, nevertheless, found ways of expressing their talents within their own environments. Walker writes:

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmother's time? In or great-grandmother's day? It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood (Walker, 233).

Walker argues that it was exceptionally difficult for our foremothers to be creative under their oppressive situations. Nevertheless, they often found means by which to maintain and express their creativity, even when not supported or even allowed expression in their immediate surroundings.

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