Published in 1983, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose is a collection composed of 36 separate pieces written by Alice Walker.
"[2] In addition to writing about womanhood and creativity, Walker addresses subjects such as nuclear weapons, anti-Semitism, and the Civil Rights Movement.
In a 1984 review of the collection, Lynn Munro noted that: "Reading these essays not only gives one a clearer sense of Alice Walker but also countless insights into the men and women who have touched her life."
As Walker begins to research the practice of voodoo by rural Southern blacks in the thirties, she becomes aware of Hurston's works.
Hurston's book Mules and Men, a collection of folklore, sparks Walker's interest immediately because it provides all the stories that Southern blacks "had forgotten or of which they had grown ashamed…and showed how marvelous, and, indeed, priceless, they are".
[5] In her essay, "Looking for Zora," Walker speaks about her trip to Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida, to discover the life of her ancestral teacher.
[6] When Walker arrives in Florida, she purchases a tombstone that reads: "Zora Neale Hurston 'A Genius of the South' Novelist, Folklorist, Anthropologist 1901-1960".
The line "a genius of the South" comes from a poem by Jean Toomer, whom Walker applauds for his "sensitivity to women and his ultimate condescension toward them".
[7] Walker's exploration for the black writers of the past connects to her search for the kind of books that are underrepresented in American literature.
In Part II of In Search of Our Mother's Gardens Alice Walker focuses on the Civil Rights Movement and the important leaders who made contributions to it.
She met a Jewish law student named Mel Leventhal, who gave her inspiration to write "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was it?."
Walker's mother taught her and her siblings to embrace their culture but at the same time to move up north to escape the harsh realities of the South.
She clarifies that "she seeks to find a way in which black abused and poor and white privileged and rich can meet and exchange some warmth of themselves.
Walker presents her as more than a mother and wife; she is similar to her husband, and is making a conscientious effort to fight for equality and civil liberties for African Americans.
Walker finds it difficult to understand how a woman, who just lost a loved one to the brutality, could continue in the battle for Civil Rights.
Black women's potential for creative freedom is stifled by their position in society that places a series of tropes and caricatures onto their being, operating to delegitimize the work they produce.
Walker says black women did not have the opportunity to pursue their dreams because they were given the main responsibility of raising children, obeying their husbands, and maintaining the household: "Or was she required to bake biscuits for a lazy backwater tramp, when she cried out in her soul to paint watercolors of sunsets, or the rain falling on the green and peaceful pasturelands?
Walker cites Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, and Aretha Franklin to note talent lost among the black race and culture.
Walker focuses on the phrase, "contrary instincts"[17] used by Woolf, believing that this what Wheatley felt since she was taught that her origin was an untamed and inadequate culture and race.
There was a never a moment for her to sit down, undisturbed, to unravel her own private thoughts; never a time free from interruption-by work or the noisy inquiries of children.
Walker was discloses that she was teased as a child due to her disfigurement, which made her feel worthless and later on as a college student she began to seriously contemplate suicide.
Walker says, "That year I made myself acquainted with every philosopher's position on suicide, because by that time it did not seem frightening or even odd, but only inevitable".
[22] Walker also began to lose her faith in a higher being because she felt as though her thoughts of suicide disappointed God, therefore weakening her relationship with him.
Walker then explains her passion for poetry, "Since that time, it seems to me that all of my poems-and I write groups of poems rather than singles-are written when I have successfully pulled myself out of a completely numbing despair, and stand again in the sunlight.
Walker expresses this thought when she says, "…I believe in listening-to a person, the sea, the wind, the trees, but especially to young black women whose rocky road I am still traveling".