When I first started reading In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens: Womanist Prose, I thought, you know, I don’t know much about the lives of African American women post-World War I. But by the end of the essay, seeing that it was written in 1974, I questioned, where are the fathers? Were dotting, supportive African American husbands non-existent back in 1974? Why are men demonized in every story we’ve read since “Hedda Gabler”? (In this essay it is unclear who abuses the women, only that they were abused, always; on page 233 there’s an “ignorant and depraved white” overseer, but he’s the only male abuser described.)

It’s possible that because this essay is about the secret that feeds the deprived souls of African American women, men are not in the focus and are rarely mentioned. However, in the few instances that men or fathers are mentioned, I’m led to believe that they’re either trivial or uncompassionate beings—far cries from the dotting, supportive male figures I imagined them to be. Take quote in page 233 for example: “And men took our mothers and grandmothers, ‘but got no pleasure from it.’” Let me mention that sexual abuse of black women is often referred to in this essay, starting from lines 3 and 4 on page 232; that being said, in context, “took” can either mean to have intercourse with, or marry black women. But why claim that no man got pleasure from the act? Did they never love their women? Why does Walker argue this? Unfortunately for me, she doesn’t elaborate further.

If men, specifically of color, were unsympathetic or compassionless towards African American women, then perhaps that’s why Walker wrote that they didn’t get pleasure from their relationships. However, on page 238, there’s an intriguing image that Walker paints, one with her mother and father working side-by-side on a workers field. The one instance where Walker mentions her father is brief but says, “During the ‘working’ day, [my mother] labored beside—not behind—my father in the fields.” This image tells me that her father cared enough about her mother to let her be his equal, let her work beside him, instead of forcing her to work behind him. Nonetheless, Mother’s Gardens leaves me begging the question, what did African American husbands do to support their African American wives creatively? If creativity and “respect for strength” are things needed to nurture one’s soul, then what did men do to facilitate women’s ability to express either one? Or were they simply trivial, passive beings back in 1974? Again, unfortunately Walker does not elaborate further.