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 critically acclaimed autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings not only tells the story of one young child's struggle to overcome the horrific trials in her young life, but calls upon a forebear: Paul Laurence Dunbar's famous line resonates in the title. Finally, Morrison, in her essay "The Ancestor as Foundation," argues that the presence--or absence--of the ancestor in African American fiction tends to determine the happiness, or well-being of the protagonist. As you read samples of each woman's powerful contributions, notice the common desire to reach back in time to a sense of history and connectedness, and a grounding in common cultural memory. How does Morrison, for instance, describe what the African American novel should be in terms of expressing the African American (female's) experience? How does her focus on connection set the foundation for a future in African American literary expression?

Below is an excerpt from the motion picture adaptation of Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved. Here we find Baby Suggs, Holy during a sermon in a Hush Harbor. What do you notice about her language that seems familiar? Where else have you heard such entreaties to 'love' one's self, one's flesh? Further, what do you notice about the style of worship that harkens to indigenous Africana religion?