Alice Walker and Racism

Bruce Bassi
English 110-39
September 24, 2002

“Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What’s a sun-dial in the shade?”
- Benjamin Franklin

Imagine racist America two hundred years ago. For some, simply writing about loved ones of another majority race was subject to condemnation and criticism. Writers in this situation, such as Phillis Wheatley, were so fearless and went against unspoken laws, that today they inspire us. They appear in our literature as unique symbols, superior exceptions of their time. Alice Walker mentions Wheatley in “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” as a prominent black woman who struggled for such a literary freedom during the 19th century. Although Wheatley was allowed to write, Walker suggests that Wheatley had a more exquisite, passionate talent within her that was suppressed throughout her writing due to the societal pressure she had received. Everybody is inherently born with a special talent, but our society acts as a container that molds us into people we are not—people contrary to our instinctive, natural characters. Our inherent characteristics are evident in our childhood. Then as we become adults, we become a blend of our societal influences and our childhood background. Walker suggests that it is more important and more beneficial to one’s health to embrace her childhood and ancestry.

Born in Africa (brought over to America on a slave boat) and then raised by a wealthy white family in Boston, Wheatley neglects to acknowledge her heritage in her writing. Out of sheer sympathy, we may be able to understand why Wheatley would want to suppress her traumatic arrest in her home country and degrading, inhumane shipment treated as a piece of cargo. Understandably, the subjects of her poems and letters are white people who have been an influence in her life. Wheatley would often correspond to Lord Dartmouth (founder of Dartmouth University) and George Washington expressing admiration for the two men. In Wheatley’s salutation, she would call herself their “humble servant” (Robinson, 51). Wheatley refers to the students at the University of Cambridge in New England as God-like, “ye blooming plants of human race divine,” in her poem “To the University of Cambridge in New England.” Furthermore, she refers to herself as “an Ethiop,” without mentioning her struggles in the slightest manner. Many critics claim “her poetry is a product of a White mind, a mind that has been so engulfed in education […] that she expressed no strong sentiments for those who had been cast into wretchedness of slavery by those she so often praised with her pen” (Robinson, 134). While these critics’ statements definitely coincide with Walker’s claim Wheatley had been hindered by adjusting to a radically new environment, they do not support Walker’s exaggeration of Wheatley’s difficulties being the main contributor to her death. Walker, who evidently researches her subjects in great depth, interpreted Wheatley’s controversial writing to degrade her health. Meanwhile, a layman’s interpretation of the same research on Wheatley’s life reveals that she had a simple life full of freedoms that many blacks did not have. However, Wheatley’s difficulties in life are Walker’s focus.

Walker builds a stronger, more convincing argument by a means of exaggeration of Wheatley’s life. Perhaps she does not expect her reader to research Wheatley and compare another source to Walker’s description. Walker describes Wheatley as an extremely frail slave who “was so thwarted and hindered by […] contrary instincts, that she […] lost her health[…]” (742). The entire passage on pages 742 and 743 regards Wheatley as being disabled due to her “contrary instincts.” The term “contrary instincts,” first coined by Virginia Woolf, explains the predicament of certain people who were born in an environment radically different from their ancestors’ environment. Walker illustrates Wheatley’s instance, “we know that you were not an idiot or a traitor; only a sickly little black girl, snatched from your home and country and made a slave […] ”(743). Walker’s example concerning a “sickly little black girl,” does not warrant “contrary instincts” to apply solely to blacks.

Walker cites examples in her essay of black women who are put into a white environment and cannot live happily because of the inner conflict. However, “contrary instincts” can apply to anybody of any race whose spirit pulls in one direction, and whose environment pulls in another. Walker’s goal is to convey the way in which Wheatley struggled, not the circumstances of the struggle, because “contrary instincts” can apply to anyone. In fact, Woolf was a white woman who first used the term. Walker writes of black women who are put into a white society because she can most easily relate to this scenario. If she were to write about white women, she would be in the same predicament as Wheatley, the one Walker describes ironically as “suffering from […] who knows what mental agonies […] so torn by “contrary instincts” ” (742). The outcome of this mentally turbulent period is a struggle for survival. Wheatley had not learned from parents what she must do to live healthily.

Children are essentially the teachings of their parents. Wheatley’s parents were the mold of countless generations who understood the elements of survival of a black person in Africa. Not only was Wheatley never allowed to learn from her parents, but also her parents did not know how to live in a dominantly white world either. Phillis had become the first generation black Wheatley in America, just as Phillis’s eldest true parents were the first generation in Africa. Walker illustrates Wheatley’s problematic, confusing and unusual American lifestyle: “a woman who still struggled to sing the song that was your gift, although in a land of barbarians who praised you for your bewildered tongue. It is not so much what you sang, as that you kept alive, in so many of our ancestors, the notion of song” (743). Walker clearly emphasizes that attempting to sing is more important in survival than is a content of the song. “Song” is a general term that can mean any possible expression of art. Overlook not her meaning, but the definition of her words; Walker’s seemingly contradictory statement may do harm to her argument with the wrong interpretation. Walker seems so interested in the content of Wheatley’s poems, yet she claims that the notion of her song should keep her alive. Wheatley wrote about controversial topics; she would express her fondness of the white people in her life, while totally disregarding her black slave heritage. Walker considers this to be the artificial Wheatley; Wheatley has never sung her true song. As all of Wheatley’s ancestors have survived on “song,” Wheatley died from lack of expression of her instinctive song.

Wheatley was, however, living with a wealthy family who educated her since her arrival in America. Wheatley was allowed to marry the man of her choice, and lead her own life as a free person. Why had Walker expressed Wheatley’s life in such a degrading manner? Perhaps this was indeed Walker’s true interpretation of Wheatley. Walker’s pride in her heritage would make her feel compassion for those who lack thereof.

Walker pities Wheatley for her inability to celebrate her past. Of course Wheatley has a special ability to write, but Walker suggests that Wheatley’s writing could be a much better if she was able to express her passions or her true feelings. The molded, artificial Wheatley is incomparable to the Ethiopian Wheatley left behind in Africa. Indeed Wheatley had a special freedom that black women of the South did not have, but Wheatley never truly expressed what she wanted. The black women were able to express their true beings through their creations. They sang songs, told stories, made quilts and planted gardens with care, love and hope. Walker considers them artists because they were forced to use creativity to release spirituality in a “pathetic attempt to lighten the soul to a weight their work-worn, sexually abused bodies could bear” (Walker, 740). Their dreams, hopes, songs and passions showed through in their art in order to release the pressure from an inability to mend an unjust world. Walker builds this argument by reflecting upon a quilt and also upon her mother’s garden. The seemingly dirty, worthless quilt was made by “an anonymous black woman in Alabama, a hundred years ago” (Walker, 744). This woman was not only trying to provide for her family, to keep them warm, but she used the quilt as a means to express her spirituality artistically. Walker’s description of her mother’s garden is symbolic of her mother’s life. The “magical” plants which were distributed to neighbors seems to parallel her mother’s mystical way in which she had endured the stress of her time and the way which she had impacted so many people. Her mother put much love into her plantings, as Walker states, “it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant” (Walker 746). Since Walker’s mother had to plant the garden to feed her family, the garden served a dual purpose. She used this task as a way to relieve stress in her life, which in turn, kept her healthy and able to survive a very turbulent life. Walker cites this example as way of truly celebrating the past.

In essence, Walker exercises her talents and releases any spiritual pressure through writing her essay. Walker must get personal satisfaction from knowing she is educating people on equality and the importance of heritage. Walker conveys a sense of equality from the title, “how they did it- those millions of black women who were not Phillis Wheatley […] brings me to the title of this essay, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” which is a personal account that is yet shared, in its theme and meaning, by all of us” (743). Not only can we all relate to the expression of art (when Walker says “how they did it,” she means how they expressed art) but also to the underlying theme of “contrary instincts.” Walker suggests that humans have much more in common than we seem. Our spirit is what brings us all together, “and yet, it is to my mother – and all our mothers who were not famous – that 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 […]” (744). Those who do not pass on their heritage create a shallow spirit that does not seem to spark life nor interest in researchers or writers of future generations. However, Alice Walker acknowledges the true exception: Phillis Wheatley.