Symbolism in Women by Alice

Symbolism in "Women" by Alice Walker

"in many, one:"

Alice Walker's poem "Woman" and the struggle of black women for equality

The history and work of African-American women has often been rendered invisible by historians, even feminist historians. The unique contribution of black women to America has been subsumed under either the rubric of 'blackness' or 'femininity.' The unique struggle and stereotypes black women have attempted to combat have all too often been ignored. In her poem "Woman," the black womanist poet Alice Walker tries to bring the entirety of the special and invisible history of African-American women to light in a series of a few, economical images that sums up African-American women's lives.

African-American woman, Walker suggests, are more than simply motherly, desexualized 'mammies' and overly sexualized Jezebels -- or victims. They have a distinct and separate history apart from African-American men as well as white women. "The uniqueness of the African-American female's situation is that she stands at the crossroads of two of the most well? developed ideologies in America, that regarding women and that regarding the Negro." (Gray 1999, p.27). In the archetypal 'woman' of Walker's poem, Walker pays tribute to all African-American women by stressing how hard African-American women have worked and how they have been denied an education and political equality both as women and as blacks.

Her ancestors, writes Walker, were warriors as well as women who "Starched white/Shirts" (presumably for their white masters or employers). Yet they also -- with their physical and moral strength -- "battered down/Doors," and had fists as well as helping hands. The contrasted images of fists and hands suggest that in addition to nurturing others, black women also demanded their rights through history. Because of these demands, their daughters now have access to education. Black women, in the images of Walker's poem, had to become generals, laying booby traps for racist, misogynistic people so that the younger generation of black women could discover "books/Desks." It is this struggle, the particular struggle of black woman that makes the advancement of black women today possible, argues Walker's poem. Although the women of previous generations may have been illiterate they were capable of knowing: "what we [young black women]/Must know/Without knowing a page/of it / Themselves." And the struggle of African-American women and all women continues today. "Despite the indisputable gains over the years, women are still being raped, trafficked, violated and discriminated against -- not just in the rest of the world, but here in the United States (Valenti 2010). Often these women are non-white.

Black women have always had to work states Walker, even if that work was often underpaid or unpaid, unlike some of the early white feminists in the Second Wave of the American Women's Movement. The legacy of black women's strength and commitment to political, social, and financial equality has had to be strong because it has never known the luxury of white privilege or the 'choice' of having to work outside the home. In an essay for Newsweek magazine, Anna Quindlen quipped: "Forbes magazine just published an essay titled 'Don't Marry Career Women,' by a male writer who couldn't see the advantages of a wife who could pay the mortgage and support the children even if her husband lost his job or suffered a massive coronary." Because of the history of discrimination in America, black women have never had the luxury of 'choosing' not to work until their rich husband suffered a massive coronary. Black woman's income was needed to support the family. Often black women were the sole breadwinner for a family devastated by slavery and discrimination. The 'new sexism' that some women playfully indulge in today, laughing with irony at the image of a white, cartoon femininity, is a luxury that black women on the 'front lines' of struggle cannot enjoy (Thomas 2010). As noted by white feminist historian Marilyn Frye: "As a white woman I have certain freedoms and liberties. When I use them, according to my white woman's judgment, to act on matters of racism, my enterprise reflects strangely on the matrix of options within which it is undertaken" (Frye 1983, p. 110).

The different experiences of black women and white women have often generated different perceived political interests between the two groups. For example, as noted by scholar Ellen DuBois in her book Woman Suffrage and Women's Rights, when black men but not black women won the right to vote in the 19th century, many white female suffragists condemned the 14th Amendment, while anti-slavery male and female activists stressed the need for black men to gain some economic traction in America. Additionally, simply because 'women' and 'African-Americans' have shared a common history of oppression does not mean that they have always had experienced the same type of discrimination the history of America. The need for black men to establish their manhood and eschew racist stereotypes can come at a cost to the equality of black women in the black community; white women have justified their demand for equal rights, such as during the early 19th century, in terms of their right to have parity with 'uneducated' men, an idea that has implicit racism within its tone.