Rooted Book Club: Alice Walker's IN SEARCH OF OUR MOTHERS' GARDENS
We're partnering with the MS Museum of Art for our January 2025 book club!
The Rooted Book Club celebrates writers (and readers) with a connection to the South and books that explore issues of Place and Home. Listen to our past book club discussions here.
Good morning, and happy Christmas Eve to those who celebrate. I’m delighted to officially announce our first Rooted Book Club of 2025, which is in partnership with the Mississippi Museum of Art and their fabulous exhibition Of Salt and Spirit: Black Quilters in the American South. Curated by Dr. Sharbreon Plummer, the exhibition features “over fifty handmade and machine-stitched quilts from MMA’s permanent collection, including Crossroads Quilters, Gwendolyn Magee, and several collected by American photographer Roland L. Freeman on his travels, recently acquired by MMA in 2022.” The exhibition is stunning and warmly intimate. It is perhaps one of most moving art exhibitions that I’ve ever walked through. How lucky are we that these quilts and the stories they tell are available to us here, in Mississippi.
When the MMA approached me about the book club, they shared Dr. Sharbreon Plummer’s recommended reading list, which included prose and poetry by bell hooks, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Margaret Walker. Immediately, Alice Walker’s 1983 collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, stood out to me. The book (whose title is taken from an essay of the same name) had long been on my reading list, and I had actually bought a copy at last year’s Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival after watching Alice Walker’s unforgettable keynote conversation with Dr. Ebony Lumumba.
Alice Walker’s time in Jackson, Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement was instrumental in her development as a writer and thinker. The essays included in In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens draw on her experience as a daughter, a mother, an activist, and a writer daring to (re)claim the “womanist” tradition of the Black women artists who preceded her. Reading this book in conversation with Of Salt and Spirit is a powerful experience. And did you know, Alice Walker is also a quilter? Here is an excerpt from the titular essay (you can read it in pdf form here):
“I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible—except as Creator: hand and eye. She is involved in work her soul must have. Ordering the universe in the image of her personal conception of Beauty.
Her face, as she prepares the Art that is her gift, is a legacy of respect she leaves to me, for all that illuminates and cherishes life. She has handed down respect for the possibilities—and the will to grasp them.
For her, so hindered and intruded upon in so many ways, being an artist has still been a daily part of her life. This ability to hold on, even in very simple ways, is work black women have done for a very long time.” (From “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” 1974)
I’d love for you to join me for this one-of-a-kind book club experience at the Mississippi Museum of Art on January 23, 2025. The program will kick off with a guided tour of the Of Salt and Spirit gallery by a member of the MMA staff, followed by our conversation about Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens. If you had to read one essay in the book, I recommend reading the title essay. But I hope you have the chance to read the other essays, too, as they will bring up a lot of generative material for our conversation. The event is free (thank you MMA!), but please do register ahead of time.
Schedule of Events:
5:15 | Cash bar
5:45 | Guided tour in the galleries
6:15 | Facilitated Rooted Book Club discussion about Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens
Have you been to the Of Salt and Spirit exhibition yet? Have you read Alice Walker’s essays? Let me know in the comments!
In February, we will resume our book club discussions virtually. For those of you who like to plan your reading ahead of time, here are our confirmed 2025 virtual book club picks. Book clubs take place the last week of the month. I’ll send out exact dates, times, and registration links in future book club emails.
February: I Made It Out of Clay with author and Rooted contributor Beth Kander
March: Proud Flesh: A Memoir of Motherhood, Intimate Violence, and Reclaiming Pleasure with author and Rooted contributor Catherine Simone Gray
April: Come By Here with author Neesha Powell-Ingabire
May: TBD
June: TBD
July: World Without End: Essays on Apocalypse and After with author Martha Park
Just noticed these questions: yes, I've been to this amazing exhibit, and yes, I've read all of the essays in Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. See you tomorrow! Elise