Alice Walker argues and proves the artistic abilities of oppressed Black American mothers, grandmothers and daughters during their enslavement and also within her own community growing up. Alice uses a lot of imagery within her text to prove the artistic ability of the slaves, and also what held them back from it. The abuse the women of the time endured, “…forced to bear children who were more often than not sold away from her-eight, ten, fifteen, twenty children” in addition to the lashing and rape, Alice asks the question of how? How could it be that the after all of this the Black American woman survived, to show her strength and artistic ability? Alice uses Phillis Wheatley as an example. She briefs us on her life, and the very few free years she had to express her poetic gift without a white man dictating what she did. Instead her priorities must be elsewhere, with her children. Even though, at the time her work was not considered great by any means, Alice proves “Its is not so much what you sang, as that you kept alive, in so many of our ancestors, the notion of song.”
Alice related her own life with her mothers duties within and outside of their home to that of the life of a slave. She doesn’t do it directly but there is a comparison that she is trying to make. Her mother worked long hours, made sure her children went to school and “made all the clothes we wore, even my brothers’ overalls.” This is her moms ways of not letting the world and others oppress her. “In the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., there hangs a quilt unlike another in the world. …it portrays the story of crucifixion. It is considered rare, beyond price. Though it follows no known pattern of quilt making…it is obviously the work of a person of powerful imagination and deep spiritual feeling…a not that says it was made by “an anonymous Black woman in Alabama, a hundred years ago”” This here explained that even with the little to no support and even materials she had she still expressed the artistic ability she had, just the same as Alice’s mother did. This, the power of courage and spirt, was what kept the poetry, song and artistic ability alive in the Black American woman after all this time. Well, that, and hope, hope that someday things would change, and there would be a way to express themselves for who they were.