Alice Walker Biography

Walker's personal narrative creates a glimpse into the reality of struggling black women who were nothing more than "the mule of the world" (672).

Her mother's history divulges how black women were forbidden to express themselves artistically. They were instead just used for pleasure by the mens in their life and not once ever acknowledged (669). Walker's mothers and grandmothers lives a lonely, sad, apathetic life while they could very well have been poets, writers, painters, sculptors, or musicians (670). Walker's deep inside account of these women reveals the devastating lives of artists who has a remain unheard till now. To the world around them, these women had no creativity and certainly no intelligence, which forced their creative
Alice Walker uses her own mother as a method to explain the creativity that has lived on in black women from the post-Reconstruction era on. She explains her mother telling stories which came naturally like breathing and her mother's magnificent garden. Her mother tended the garden while still continuing her work in the field throughout the day and caring for her children. She was creating beauty where there was never any room for any. Walker noticed that only when her mother was working in her flowers she was radiant, happy and content (674). Her garden was always praised, with strangers even asking to stand or walk among her art (674). Even when these women had nothing to look to for beauty or inspiration, they created things which were astonishing to the rest of the world. Walker was able to find her own creativity by seeing her mother's creativity in the creation of her gardens (675). These gardens inspired Walker to a degree and by viewing her mother's creativity she was able to write and find her creativity in writing. This shows that even to this day, black women are keeping their creativity alive and passing it on to each new