SOURCE: “The Politics of Matrilineage: Mothers and Daughters in the Poetry of African American Women, 1965-1985,” in Women of Color: Mother-Daughter Relationships in 20^th-Century Literature, edited by Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, University of Texas Press, 1996, pp. 117-131.

In the following essay, Worsham includes Walker in a discussion of mother-daughter relationships as represented in African-American women's poetry.

“The image of the mother,” according to critic Andrea Benton Rushing, “is the most prevalent image of black women” in African American poetry (“Afro-American,” 75). These images have been developed through a long and distinguished literary history, reaching back through the diaspora to ancient African cultures in which “the African woman is associated with core values” and is revered as “guardian of traditions, the strong Earth-Mother who stands for security and stability” (Rushing, “African,” 19). These values, passed down through an oral tradition in which women have played a major role, as well as through...