Response to Walker

     This is a very dense, and powerful essay. Each sentence is an incredibly moving statement worded so precisely and accurately that you can re-read several times over and appreciate it more each time for its both complexity and poetic style.

     Walker begins by talking about about the role of black women in the United State's until around the 1920's (and sometimes a little afterwords). She explains how these women were subject to torture, sexual abuse, and essentially were so spiritual and had such powerful minds that they were like "saints" in a sense. They tried to escape their bodies, which were damaged and abused, and live only through their mind and the hopes and dreams they had for themselves and their ancestors, knowing that they would never have these dreams, but hoping for the future anyway.

     These women were the grandmothers of many African American women today. Walker's essay thoroughly compares and contrasts the ideas of several works, and what each work has to say about these women, specifically how black women were artistic or creative and how they spread this creativity through the next generations that lived on.

     This was hard for me to read. Not only is the topic chilling, but in order to understand many of both Walker and her source's arguments and details you need to spend a lot of time thinking about some horrible situations. The language is amazing and powerful, but it took me a lot of time to understand the things Walker was saying at times, as well as how she could kind of contradict things she said previously but citing a different source and comparing ideas.