About the Book

In this groundbreaking classic essay collection, Alice Walker speaks out as a Black woman, writer, mother, and feminist on topics ranging from the personal to the political.

This edition includes a new Letter to the Reader by Alice Walker.

Originally published forty years ago, Alice Walker’s first collection of nonfiction is a dazzling compendium that remains both timely and relevant. In these thirty-six essays, Walker contemplates her own work and that of other writers, considers the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and writes vividly and courageously about a scarring childhood injury. Throughout, Walker explores the theories and practices of feminism, incorporating what she calls the “womanist” tradition of black women—insights that are vital to understanding our lives and society today.

“When I graduated from college, my father gave me Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. It was a beaten-up paperback in 1999, and it’s even more battered now.” —Jesmyn Ward

Critical Praise

“One of the healthiest collections of essays I have come across in a long time . . . What [Walker] says about the black woman she says from the depths of oppression. What is said from the depths of oppression illuminates all other oppressions.” — New Statesman

“Reflects not only the ideas but a life that has . . . breathed color, sound, and soul into fiction and poetry—and into our lives as well.” — San Francisco Chronicle

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Product Details

• ISBN: 9780063346840
• ISBN 10: 0063346842
• Imprint: Amistad
• On Sale: 11/28/2023
• Trimsize: 5.310 in (w) x 8.000 in (h) x 0.000 in (d)
• Pages: 432
• List Price: $19.99
• BISAC1 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / African American
• BISAC2 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays
• BISAC3 : LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Women Authors
• BISAC4 : SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory