Tending My Mothers' Gardens in a Room of My Own: The Muse

Alice Walker celebrated her sixty-ninth birthday on Saturday. Walker's novels, essays, and poems are a receptacle for black women's intellectual traditions, culture, and language. She has been a force behind so much of my creative and intellectual exploits as a scholar and an artist. 

http://alicewalkersgarden.com is Alice Walker's official site.

On this blog I write a series inspired by her famous essay "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" in which I share my memories of how my grandmother and mother fostered my creative and intellectual potential.  I share their stories so that my daughter will never have to search for her mothers' gardens, but carefully tend them.

In a Room of My Own Tending My Mothers' Gardens: The Only Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart...

Broken hearts, burnout, and weary spirits are inevitable. Internal conflict changes us. External conflict may even rearrange our countenace for good or bad (the choice is our own). However, Alice Walker's autobiography says it all in the title The Only Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart.

The only forward motion I could make in the past year was in a circle as I dealt with so much uncertainty, self-doubt, indecision.

It's time to move forward broken heart and all.

Mourning, but Qualified to Live…

The wall that I hit after my last post in April was thirty feet thick, and it looked like this: 

I was in Target picking up an Rx only to see this display. I ran to the restroom nauseated and in tears at the reminder of my Mother's death. "She was only 51!" That was the litany that replayed in my mind...

Emotionally the wall I faced began to mount, and I felt like I had to dig my way through with a teaspoon. I was dreading my first May without my Mom: the days that lead up to Mother’s Day, the day itself (I slept through most of it), and the residual May mushiness. June couldn’t come quickly enough, but NOW June is here.

The smallest tools are more powerful than we may think; because, the teaspoon worked.  I see the sun.

I have gardens to tend...

TENDING MY MOTHERS' GARDENS IN A ROOM OF MY OWN: Spoiled Rotten!

I designed this inspiration board of French women and expats because I've been pretty uninspired to study for my French exam lately. I've let go of the bitterness left by my University's French department failing me because I couldn't get my Mum's death certificate in time to prove I wasn't skipping out on French class; but, I digress. French is one of the two languages required for my PhD and Yoruba is the other. A little visual inspiration should be just what I need to get in gear...

Left to right, top to bottom:
film still from Noir De, Bessie Coleman, Lois Mailou Jones, Josephine Baker, French Vogue, Nina Simone

But as I cut and pasted women into my montage their amazing stories made me feel so small and petty. Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman's level of determination made me hang my head in shame.

Bessie Coleman, the first African-American female pilot was born in 1892, the tenth of 13 children. Coleman got the idea of becoming a pilot while reading newspaper articles about World War I pilots. No flight school in the United States would train her, but Coleman didn’t let that stop her. She took a French language course in Chicago, then, using her savings and the help of some influential friends, she traveled to France. She learned to fly and got her license in 1921 from the Federation Aeronautique Internationale. When Coleman returned to the United States, now a celebrity, she performed in airshows and raised money to open her own flight school. She died in 1926 in an aircraft accident, apparently while flight testing a Curtiss JN-4 (from Bessie Coleman: A Life Less Ordinary, AOPA Pilot Blog, January 26, 2009 by Jill W. Tallman, Associate Editor ).

Nothing kept Bessie Coleman from her dream: not racial barriers, financial barriers, gender barriers, and MOST CERTAINLY NOT A FRENCH LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT. 

TENDING MY MOTHERS' GARDENS IN A ROOM OF MY OWN: A Time to...

I never watched my mother or grandmothers get harried over New Year’s Day, in the way that I have over the past few days. Their only requisites were an immaculately organized and well stocked home with pots of greens and black-eyed peas cooking—no sweat! Unlike my wise foremothers, my energy levels have ebbed and flowed frenetically as I plotted my next move for 2012. My plan has to be on paper by December 31!

I continued to make lists and organize, only to make more lists and reorganize. My energy was of the destructive variety: the kind that uproots harvests before they’re ripe and struggles to plant seed in frozen ground. My turning point was anxiety that manifested physically my chest. I took a moment to collect my calm with my  Henri Bendel Vanilla Bean Candle and a cup of (decaffeinated!) Zhena’s Fireside Chai. Breathe…in 1,2,3,4,5; out 1,2,3,4,5

My ancestors recognized the power of seasons, so New Year’s Day didn’t cause them to lose their cool. They weren’t distracted by human demarcations on their life goals, because everything had its own time and season. I felt my own seasons shift in June, and again radically in August.

"To everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven..." (Ecclesiastes 3:10, AMP)

I let all the articles and posts about resolutions get to me and make me feel as if what I was doing (my list of thirty-two things to accomplish before I turn thirty-two) wasn’t enough. All those articles and posts I’ve collected are pretty awesome, but I’ll file them away for the start of my next season.

WHAT I WORE TODAY: MY FASHION DNA

My grandmother had a keen sense of style. She never wore a pair of pants a day in her life. I thought she was weird when I was younger, but now I feel blessed that she instilled a modicum of femininity that few women can say they have had. I thought she was mean because she expected the same commitment to femininity from me. I just wanted to fit in and wear pants, jeans, and shorts like everybody else. I know I inherited a lot of my flair from her. She gave me my first sewing machine; I remember it so well.

Ruth Ellen, whom I affectionately called Gramma, must have taken this picture in the early to mid-1940s. I'm 90% sure that she is in Perrine, Florida, and not the Bahamas, which made me wonder why she was wearing a capelet over a long-sleeved shirt. Whatever the reason, she is working it, especially with that flower pin. I attempted a similar look, but to my chagrin I didn't pull it off as gracefully. I had too many heavy layers, which ultimately made me look heavy and uncomfortable. I have a lot more to learn from Gramma...

TENDING MY MOTHERS' GARDENS IN A ROOM OF MY OWN

The premise for my musings about gardens & rooms:

"Our mothers and grandmothers, some of them: moving to music not yet written. And they waited. They waited for a day when the unknown thing that was in them would be made known; but guessed, somehow in their darkness, that on the day of their revelation they would be long dead...

Walker's article speaks of black women during slavery: "They were creators, who lived lives of spiritual waste, because they were so rich in spirituality - which is the basis of Art - the strain of enduring their unused and unwanted talent drove them insane...

What did it mean for a black woman to be an artist in our grandmothers' time? In our great-grandmothers' day? It is a question with an answer cruel enough to stop the blood." Alice Walker, "In Search of Our Mother's Gardens," MS Magazine Vol. 16 (April 20, 1981).

As I've mention ad nauseum, I am so very blessed to have had overtly creative female elders who encouraged and fostered that same well-spring in me. So rather than searching for my Mothers' gardens', I am reaping the harvest that they have sown in my life and making sure to tend my garden wisely. And although, Walker acknowledges that a room of one's own is not necessary to spawn the creative process, I am fortunate enough to have one.

In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf deems a room and purse of ones' own a precursor to creativity. Walker uses Phillis Wheatley, an indigent slave, as a prime example that a room is a luxury - a decadence even. In the 21st century, I make the best of both world's in a room of my own with a reminder of the gardens I must tend.

TENDING MY MOTHERS' GARDENS IN A ROOM OF MY OWN: The Diva

As I mentioned in a prior post, I am blessed to have had overtly creative female elders. My paternal grandmother was a poet, pastor, baker, floral stylist, hairdresser, and an owner of multiple small businesses.  However, what I found most interesting was that she was a published songwriter and had recorded a gospel album in the 1950s, "Keep on Living the Prize is at the End." I never had a chance to hear the song or see the album but I can only imagine...

TENDING MY MOTHERS' GARDENS IN A ROOM OF MY OWN



This lamp sold out quickly at Anthopologie but
 there are quite a few sites that offer
 DIY advice to create this
 lamp inexpensively.
As a memento, I may try my hand at this soon .

I had the blessing of having an overtly creative mother and grandmother.  Their talents were so influential to who I am now: how I dress, decorate, cook, and so on. My mother was a gifted interior stylist who had a keen eye for antiques.  As I mentioned in a previous post, she was most interested in the Victorian era and all of its flourishes, florals, lace, and rich wood accents.  One of my five siblings can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm having a very difficult time remembering her ever drinking out of a mug.  She always took her tea in a delicate, sliver- rimmed cup and saucer with two sugars and a spot of cream. When I was little my older sister and I had a tea set as well (and it was not plastic). We often mimicked our mother's graceful morning ritual with our own tea parties.
Somewhere between the age of eight and now, I lost that treasured ease of preparing and properly enjoying tea.  One morning in one of my clumsy moments of haste, I reached for my reusable(ecochic) Starbuck's ceramic cup and cringed as it crashed into shards onto the floor. 
It was the end of an era. Somehow, I feel like I got some of my sanity back-- the sanity I lost during those treks down I-75 gulping enough Starbuck's coffee to keep me up for weeks on end.  I know there will still be some all nighters in my future as a PhD candidate after this hiatus, but I will no longer make it a lifestyle.

I have gardens to tend...    

A Different Mirror: (Re)Imagining Black Womanhood

I curated a A Different Mirror last May at the height of outrage of one of the most shameful declarations of objective research in modern history. On the website of Psychology Today, Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics declared that African American women were less attractive than women of other races. Psychology Today deleted the initial post and issued an apology in the wake of a firestorm of media attention from the Root, the Huffington Post, and Clutch Magazine (just a few of the multitude).

  

Here I am with world-renowned artist Wini McQueen,

in front of her awesome fabric art piece, She.

As curator of A Different Mirror, I had this show conceived for months. However, the unfortunate current event set in motion by Kanazawa reminded me why it was so important to assemble works by African women from Macon, Georgia's, Tubman African American Museum's permanent collection that dispelled cruel and stereotypical notions of black female identity. A highlight of the exhibit's opening was a beautiful performance by the renowned dance company, Hayiya Dance Theatre founded and led by Pilar Wilder.

The undeniable talent of the Hayiya dancers in concert with Nina Simone's emotionally charged and historically relevant "Four Women" created a solemn moment for all the women in the room...

As curator of the exhibit there is no way to choose a favorite work of art; they're like children. How could I possibly choose one as a favorite? But at this moment Ce Scott's Beauty Standard defines my curating experience. I wanted to showcase women in the art world who rejected society's mirrors. Scott goes even further by binding (in Kente cloth) the source of some of our societal delusions of beauty: the Barbie doll. Under the cloth the viewers are invited to see themselves: the true standards of beauty...

If you missed the opening to the new exhibit, don't fret because it's permanent.

Tubman African American Museum

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