#214 To Hell With Dying- Alice Walker

#214 To Hell With Dying- Alice Walker

This is the final story in this great collection- In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Woman. Reading these slowly, space-out over the course of several months, I appreciated the subtle beauty of her prose in a way I wouldn’t have if I consumed them all at once.

“Mr. Sweet was a diabetic and an alcoholic and a guitar player and loved down the road from us on a neglected cotton farm.”

He liked to play with the children from the area and they loved to play with Mr. Sweet. “Toward all us children he was very kind, and had the grace to be shy with us, which is unusual in grown-ups…his ability to be drunk and sober at the same time made him an ideal playmate, for he was as weak as we were and we could usually best him in wrestling.”

Such a sweet and touching love story, a perfect way to end this collection.

Rating: 9-9-10-9 Total= 37

#186 The Flowers- Alice Walker

#186 The Flowers- Alice Walker

This is a stunningly beautiful story. It’s very short and it’s kind of a prayer, or more like a dream. Myop is dreaming of herself as a 9 year-old girl full of happiness and wonder.

“It seemed to Myop’s she skipped lightly from her house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been  as beautiful as these.”

But as she travels further away from her home, this peacefulness, this comfort fades.

“…She was a mile of more from home. She had often ben as far before, but the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself.”

So, she tries to go back home, where things were more pleasant, more peaceful…

“Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning.”

But you can never go back. Once lost, that innocence is gone forever. Myop comes across a tall man with jagged white teeth, and she finds broken limb with a old noose. The further you get from home, the more you learn about things outside your comfort, the harder it becomes to find that “peacefulness of the morning.”

“And the summer was over.”

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#158 Entertaining God- Alice Walker

#158 Entertaining God- Alice Walker

Entertaining God encapsulates many of the themes found in Walker’s collection In Love & Trouble. Mostly it talks about identity; finding it, keeping it, understanding it, and mostly falling to false truths. This falseness is found on the deepest levels and in the most shallow of places:

“He has married his first wife in a gigantic two-ring ceremony, in a church, and his wife had had the wedding pictures touched up so that he did not resemble himself. In the pictures his skin was black and olive brown and smooth when in fact it was black and stubbly and rough. He had married his wife because she was light and loose and fun and because she had long red hair. After they were married she stopped dyeing it and let it grow out black…well, she was just no longer anyone he recognized.”

Like many characters that Walker writes about, finding identity often leads them to radical politics and the Nation of Islam:

“He too changed his name and took an X. He was not comfortable with the X, however, because he began to feel each morning that the day before he had not existed. He knew what it was, of course; without a last name John would never be able to find him.”

Religion permeates the search for identity, truth, and self, but as expected, finding these things are hard battles ending in false shadows or at best small fleeting victories.

“…one of the millions who needed the truth their religion could bring. He had finally accepted himself, but it seemed that in the moment the beauty of this acceptance was most clear he must say goodbye to it.”

This search is a lonely crusade, a singular path. To go this route one must leave the past where it is, and go through that door alone:

“Softly, she would call to him…and through he never answered her, he would amble down…and stand waiting…He would wait for her to wipe her eyes. Then he would go with her as far as the door.”

Notable Passage: “The very air seemed alive. It was like singing or flying and the boy felt exhilarated. He stretched his hands above his head as high as they would go as he greeted the sun, which rose in slow distant majesty across a misty sky, nudging clouds gently as it made its way.”

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35

#144 Strong Horse Tea- Alice Walker

#144 Strong Horse Tea- Alice Walker

“Rannie Toomer’s little baby boy Snooks was dying from double pneumonia and whooping cough.”

The baby will die without care. Rannie wants proper care, a real doctor, no folk medicine or local useless remedies:

“I don’t believe in none of that swamp magic. And the old home remedies I took when I was a child come just short of killing me.”

She doesn’t know how to get help, she’s never called on a real doctor, doesn’t know how to call a real doctor and can't leave the house. So, the natural thing to do is ask an official public servant that she sees everyday, the mailman. But he only recommends folk-medicine and is put off that she asks him for help:

“Why did colored folks always want you to do something for them?”

The doctor doesn’t come, and she is left with no other choice than to go out and get herself some Strong Horse Tea. A mother will do anything she can to heal her child, but is it enough?

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#130 The Welcome Table- Alice Walker

#130 The Welcome Table- Alice Walker

An old life-worn black woman at the end of her days tries to go to church for the last time, but it is a white church. After politely telling her to leave, and trying to shoo her out, they get forceful and carry her to the church steps and leave her suffering outside.

Inside the church they stand and prayed about: “the protection and promise of God’s impartial love.” Bewildered more than hurt, she sings and stares down the road, finally spotting Jesus who has come to lead her to salvation. She is found later dead by the side of the highway, she walked herself to death.

Among the many wonderful traits of Alice Walker is her poignant descriptive phrases. They paint a picture that sticks with you. These are just some of the great quotes about this woman:

“She was angular and lean and the color of poor grey Georgia earth, beaten by king cotton and the extreme weather.”

“Perhaps she had known suffering. There was a dazed and sleepy look in her aged blue-brown eyes. But for those who searched hastily for reasons in that old tight face, shut now like an ancient door, there was nothing to read.”

“On her face centuries were folded into the circles around on eye, while around the other, etched and mapped as if for print, ages more threatened again to live.”

Heartbreaking story, beautifully written. That pretty much sums up all of Alice Walker stories.

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33