Alice, Maya, and Toni: Voices and Ancestors
Readings Covered: “Still I Rise,” (2156); and “My Arkansas” (2157); Morrison’s “Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,” 2286-2290; Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” 2430-2437) The women pictured above should need no lengthy introduction; in fact, each should be readily recognizable: Moving clockwise, they are Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Toni Morrison. Each of these women contributed largely, in their unique ways, to creating a growing canon of African American women writers, who looked back to ancestors for strength, guidance, nurturing, and inspiration. Alice Walker once described her experience in writing her acclaimed novel, The Color Purple , as performing the task of mediumship: that is, she imagined herself as an interlocutor between her spiritual mentor, and the character of Celie. Walker, who is a well-respected essayist and novelist attributes much of her inspiration to Zora Neale Hurston, whom she rediscovered in 1970. Angelou, whose best-selling and...
