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In Search of Our Mothers Gardens and Seventeen Syllables


             Although written quite differently, "In Search of Our Mothers" Gardens" by Alice Walker and "Seventeen Syllables" by Hisaye Yamamoto are quite similar in the messages that they convey about women and keeping culture alive that is passed down to their daughters. Walker describes throughout her excerpt how women were denied the opportunity to express themselves spiritually and creatively. In Yamamoto's story, Rosie's mother received repercussions for expressing herself through haiku and letting her heritage and spirituality shine. Both authors of the two writings express the feelings and results that comes from denying women the right to their creativity and heritage and how motherhood affects this right.
             Walker describes how women are sometimes forced into having children, and these children hinder her ability to have the time to do what she really enjoys, what lurks in her soul. Having children was more of a job, almost like a dog having a litter of puppies, only to be sold to other families with no knowledge of what happened to them (57). Children were also the product of women who were just looking for love, and got children out of the act of love (60). She describes how slave women were forced to work for unappreciative white overseers when they would much rather have spent their time painting (57). How, she questions, if these women were unable to express their creative spirit, was it passed down from generation to generation from mother to daughter. One answer might be found in an example give on page 62. An .
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             anonymous Black woman in Alabama made a quilt that portrays the Crucifixion out of the only materials that she could afford and was aloud to use in her day. A second way that these underprivileged African American women attempted to expressed themselves as artists was through the stories that they passed down to their children. These stories, however, were often interrupted by a chore that needed to be done or a child that needed to be tended to (63).


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