When I think about our current State of Affairs

[ismnotwasm]

I often think about the past. Since I'm a white woman in America, there is an incredible amount of history I don't share with woman of color. Can't share, having no true frame for the experiences of say, a Black woman.

I try hard to not make whiteness my only--or most important--point of reference for my feminism. It's a personal goal but an extremely important one to me.

Racism. Shit. Did anyone really and truly believe it had gone away?


So I read a bit of Alice Walker's "In Search of our Mothers Gardens" today, and I wanted to share this beautiful bit;

"And I remember people coming to my mother's yard to be given cuttings from her flowers; I hear again the praise showered on her because whatever rocky soil she landed on, she turned into a garden. A garden so brilliant with colors, so original in its design, so magnificent with life and creativity, that to this day people drive by our house in Georgia--perfect strangers and imperfect strangers--and ask to stand of walk among my mother's art.

I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible--except as Creator: hand and eye. She is involved in work her soul much have. Ordering the universe in the image of her personal conception of Beauty.

Her face, as she prepared the Art that is her gift, is a legacy of respect she leaves to me, for all that illuminates and cherishes life. She has handed down respect for the possibilities--and the will to grasp them.

For her, so hindered and intruded upon in so many ways, being an artist has still been a daily part of her life. This ability to hold on, even in very simple ways, is work black women have done for a very long time.

This poem is not enough, but it is something, for the woman who literally covered the holes in our walls with sunflowers:

They were women then
My mama's generation
Husky of voice--Stout of
Step
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
Starched white
Shirts
How they led
Armies
Headragged Generals
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Kitchens
To discover books
Desks
A place for us
How they knew what we
MUST know
Without knowing of page
Of it
Themselves

Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength--in search of my mother's garden, I found my own."

Alice Walker 1974