Walker in her essay starts to bring the reader into her perspective by using the poet, Jean Toomer’s experience in the south during the 1920’s. Toomer starts the reader with the perspective of the 20s in which black women were considered “the mule of the world.” (740) Toomer speaks of how black women carried so many riches that went to waste as they “entered loveless marriages.” With her use of Toomer, Walker gives

Walker makes a powerful point for her argument with the listing of famous black artists. “They dreamed dreams that no one knew…” (740) If this injustice had gone on, such artists like Bessie Smith (musician), Roberta Flack (musician), Phillis Wheatley (poet), and Zora Neale Hurston (writer) to name a few would have had their gifts blocked from the public. Artists that sculpted an area would have been muzzled by the owners who only viewed them as “sexual objects.” (740) “Driven to a numb and bleeding madness by springs of creativity in them for which there was no release.”(740) These artists shaped the art world with their different point of views and talents.

Walker then goes on to use Virginia Woolf to discuss conditions in the past for women. “Any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century [insert “eighteenth century,” insert “black

Some topics in this essay:
Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Walker Woolf’s, Jean Toomer’s, Toomer Walker, Alice Walker, , black women, Black Women, Bessie Smith, Phillis Wheatley, white male, mule world” 740, female writers, world” 740, mule world”, “the mule, reader understand, reader perspective, easier reader, virginia woolf, “the mule world”,