In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

If you've read The Color Purple, then you know that Alice Walker is an excellent novelist. Well, the good news is that she is also an incredible essayist. I would encourage teachers everywhere to use her essays in their classrooms as an example of the perfect personal essay (especially Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self). If you know me or if you've read my blog, you know that I don't usually read non-fiction. It usually bores me, and takes me forever to read. I read this book in less than two days, and I actually stayed up late to read it because I could not put it down. It's that good. The writing is excellent, and I learned so much about the experiences of black women (or rather, one black woman) in the South. It was eye-opening, engaging, and just generally awesome. I cannot recommend it enough. ( )

I have yet to read a book by Alice Walker that I did not love... Her ability with writing, whether fiction or non-fiction, is astounding and I enjoyed these essays as much as I have enjoyed her fiction. I've also been prompted to look into reading some of the black authors she mentions and recommends in this book. ( )

I enjoyed reading this book. I find Alice Walker to be an intelligent, thoughtful woman. While we are not particularly alike in any way, I found that I related to a lot of what she says. She's Southern Black and I'm Northern White, but we are both women. She grew up rural and I grew up inner city. In an odd way that's a connection. Her essays open doors and windows for me, help me to see, to better understand a life other than one like my own. I would recommend it to anyone, particularly White women wanting to better understand our Black sisters, anyone wanting in insiders view of feminism from a Black woman's perspective, and anyone wanting to understand why the Civil Rights movement was so important. She covers all these topics and more. ( )

read this after reading Their Eyes Were Watching God to get a sense of who Zora Neale Hurston was and where she stood in the general sense of things. i found alice walker's first essay on having a literary role model illuminating. ( )