"(1991) Anything We Love Can be Saved: A Writer's Activism, (Walker 1997) is a collection of 33 speeches, letters and previously published pieces with the consistent theme of the political merging into the personal in her life. Michael Anderson, reviewing this book and mentioning a piece that Walker said "remains unwritten," states that "Ms. Walker's admirers can rejoice that her silence did not extend to book length." Pettis remarks that the

..] I suffered and raged inside because of this." With her beauty destroyed, the now six-year-old Walker gave up hope that the world would still prove as open and bountiful as it had for her life up to that point, and her inner sense of worth and beauty crumbled away just as her exterior beauty was eroded away by the sudden entrance of the BB and the slow buildup of

Alice Walker's 1983 publication In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose addresses the role of creativity in women's lives. Creativity is the essence of womanhood, and therefore a symbol like that of the titular mother's garden. "Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and respect for strength-in search of my mother's garden, I found my own."(Walker 675). Imagery of gardens and life contrasts sharply with imagery of

'" (Walker, 236) The making of the quilts is another symbol for the way in which the daughter and the mother differ in their views of tradition. The quilt is also strongly associated with the African-American tradition and therefore all the more significant. While the mother and Maggie are capable of actually making the quilts, Dee or Wangero is obsessed with having them and possessing them as a symbol of her

By simply concentrating on connecting with their African heritage many failed to understand that their parents and their ancestors who lived on the American continent in general created a culture of their own that entailed elements belonging both to the African continent and to the American one. Most of the short story is about how Dee struggles to find her personal identity by turning to cultural values. While Dee is

Mama and Maggie's values are simple, their goals mundane yet uplifting at the same time. Dee, on the other hand, is full of spunk and ambition. She views the quilts as if they were anthropological artifacts, remnants not of her grandmother but from some lost civilization. Dee, renamed Wangero, wanted to hang the quilts on the wall like art. Her desire parallels her creative streak and her wacky way