Questions for "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens"

1. How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive year after year, in spite of the most heinous circumstances endured?

2. What kept alive, in so many black women, their notion of song?

3. What did you think of Walker's use of a quotation to begin the piece, as well as the manner in which she incorporates a variety of sources, voices, and even genres throughout? Is this technique effective, in your estimation? Why or why not?

4. How are people's "marginalized" identities incorporated into their writing? In what ways can one's background or lifestyle be a handicap or a source of power and vision?

5. How does Walker address her audience in an attempt to inform, convince, or challenge us? Who do you think her imagined audience is?

6 Discuss the tone of Alice Walker's essay and the images and style she uses to convey her points. What is her attitude toward the black women of the past, the "crazy, loony, pitiful women" she refers to?

7. Explain her distinction between "Saints" and "Artists." Why was black women's involuntary "sainthood" a burden and a chain? In the end, how would you describe her relationship to her heritage?

Aternative questions

What is Walker telling us in her essay?
8. Does Walker agree with Toomer's calling these courageous black women "Saints" or does she title them something less strongly tied to Christian religious beliefs? If so, what is she claiming for them?
9. Who "lit candles to celebrate the emptiness that remained"? What are the implications of this statement?
10. What does Walker see as the result of the brutality of the overseers and the neglect of the legislators?
11. Freewrite: What are some of the forms taken by these women's "living creativity" in their own lifetimes? Are these regarded as high culture?
12. What did they leave their daughters as a legacy?
13. What is the most important message in the essay?