Response: “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens”
A part of my journey to regain my poetic voice has been reading more work by other writers like myself, the ones who seem to have the words I’m looking for. In the first part of In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, Walker highlights the lives and work of women who have been artistic models for her and through whom she found encouragement and not just for art itself, but how to live as an artist. It chronicles her journey to identify the then-unmarked grave of Zora Neale Hurston in Ft. Pierce, Florida.
The first chapter of Part 3 hosts the titular essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” written by Walker in 1974. She examines the plight, the psychology, the circumstances of Black women enslaved and impoverished who would have been artists but had their avenues of expression completely torn away from them:
Femmity is motherhood daughterhood, sisterhood, and the communion of femme creation. When I ask myself why this is so important, one of my favorite Bible passages comes to mind:
In Walker’s celebration of discovering her mother’s (and other generations of Black women’s) artistic soul in the clothes and quilts she made, the gardens she grew, in the way she beautified their home, despite how ramshackle as it happened to be, I see the same joy that exploded online and in person during the release of Beyoncé's visual album Lemonade (I will write more on the Southern Gothic wonder that is Lemonade at some point). In both works, the difficulty to express one’s pain is channeled through the lives of voices of our ancestors: creating a reverberation that, while not answering all of the questions about the pain that we continue to experience or relieving the ache of STILL being hindered from tending our own spiritual, mental, and creative vineyards, offers comfort and unveils a way forward and through to a new height of expression. It is through remembering ourselves, our sisters, our mothers, and yes, our brothers and non-gendered siblings too, that we find freedom in a less than free world.
It’s through immersing myself in the works of other Black queer femmes that I’ve been able to continue writing at all, even when my tongue felt too heavy to move and fingers on the keyboard were paralyzed by the depth of my own personal ache. When I wished I could sit down with my mom and just talk all of it out, while looking through her journals and the boxes of church banner fabric she left, even though I know there are so many ways we would not agree (no, I don’t believe in a pre-tribulation rapture anymore; yes, I’m a progressive; no, Mom, I’m not straight; Yes, I go to an Anglican church…) (would it have even been productive, if I could speak to her beyond the grave?). Somehow it matters still, that I need to speak with her and it matters that she spoke her art at all.
The first chapter of Part 3 hosts the titular essay “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens” written by Walker in 1974. She examines the plight, the psychology, the circumstances of Black women enslaved and impoverished who would have been artists but had their avenues of expression completely torn away from them:
“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, that they were themselves unaware of the richness they held. They stumbled blindly through their lives: creatures so abused and mutilated in body, so dimmed and confused by pain, that they considered themselves unworthy even of hope(…) In the still heat of the post-Reconstruction South, this is how they seemed to Jean Toomer: exquisite butterflies trapped in an evil honey, toiling away their lives in an era, a century, that did not acknowledge them, except as “the mule of the world.” They dreamed dreams that no one knew—not even themselves, in any coherent fashion—and saw visions no one could understand(…) What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers’ time? In our great-grandmothers’ day? It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood(…) When we have pleaded for understanding, our character has been distorted; when we have asked for simple caring, we have been handed empty inspirational appellations, then stuck in the farthest corner. When we have asked for love, we have been given children. In short, even our plainer gifts, our labors of fidelity and love, have been knocked down our throats. To be an artist and a black woman, even today, lowers our status in many respects, rather than raises it: and yet, artists we will be.” (emphasis added)
I am very dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept! (Song of Solomon 1:5-6 ESV)
In Walker’s celebration of discovering her mother’s (and other generations of Black women’s) artistic soul in the clothes and quilts she made, the gardens she grew, in the way she beautified their home, despite how ramshackle as it happened to be, I see the same joy that exploded online and in person during the release of Beyoncé's visual album Lemonade (I will write more on the Southern Gothic wonder that is Lemonade at some point). In both works, the difficulty to express one’s pain is channeled through the lives of voices of our ancestors: creating a reverberation that, while not answering all of the questions about the pain that we continue to experience or relieving the ache of STILL being hindered from tending our own spiritual, mental, and creative vineyards, offers comfort and unveils a way forward and through to a new height of expression. It is through remembering ourselves, our sisters, our mothers, and yes, our brothers and non-gendered siblings too, that we find freedom in a less than free world.
It’s through immersing myself in the works of other Black queer femmes that I’ve been able to continue writing at all, even when my tongue felt too heavy to move and fingers on the keyboard were paralyzed by the depth of my own personal ache. When I wished I could sit down with my mom and just talk all of it out, while looking through her journals and the boxes of church banner fabric she left, even though I know there are so many ways we would not agree (no, I don’t believe in a pre-tribulation rapture anymore; yes, I’m a progressive; no, Mom, I’m not straight; Yes, I go to an Anglican church…) (would it have even been productive, if I could speak to her beyond the grave?). Somehow it matters still, that I need to speak with her and it matters that she spoke her art at all.
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