Alice Walker's exploration of creativity in women's lives

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 abuse and death, which Walker acknowledges in Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. Both the suppression or repression of creativity, and the stimulation and expression of creativity, are critical components of women's lives.

Creativity is the means by which women of color have mitigated their oppression and subjugation. On page 357, Walker states, "I went in search of the secret of what has fed that muzzled and often mutilated, but vibrant, creative spirit that the black woman has inherited, and that pops out in wild and unlikely places to this day." The imagery of popping out in "wild and unlikely places" ironically conveys creativity to be like a weed. Yet the garden flourishes. What Walker likely means is that the contributions of African-American women to dominant culture have been viewed and treated like weeds; the women themselves have been treated like invasive species to be clipped out and cut away. Yet the weeds still grow, no matter what the political motivations of the pruner. The garden of creativity grows, even when its plants, the weeds of self-expression, are stigmatized or labeled as unwanted. Women's creativity has been like "butterflies trapped in honey," notes Walker (232). It was for generations -- centuries -- illegal for women of color to express themselves. Their buried impulses have become the seeds of creativity for modern women. This is why Walker notes that the grandmothers who made sacrifices have "not perished," (235).

Creativity is the vehicle of liberation. Walker also refers to the scores of women of color whose creativity had been stifled or repressed either due to self-censorship or to social pressure. When writing about Phillis Wheatley, for example, Walker states, "For these grandmothers and mothers of ours were not Saints, but Artists; driven to a numb and bleeding madness by the springs of creativity in them for which there was no release." Walker also mentions Virginia Woolf's work in a similar domain, as both women used their creativity as a means of personal release from trauma that was directly linked to patriarchy. The "crazy, loony, pitiful women" were "without a doubt…our mothers and grandmothers," (232). These women whose seeds became the gardens of tomorrow's liberation were those whose pain and suffering provided the fertilizer for future generations of artists and lovers. Insanity and creativity often go hand in hand, just as sainthood and insanity do. A person does not come so close to God without being a little insane, and "the strain of enduring their unused and unwanted talent drove them insane," notes Walker (233).