In this groundbreaking classic essay collection, Alice Walker speaks out as a Black woman, writer, mother, and feminist on topics ranging from the personal to the political. This edition includes a new Letter to the Reader by Alice Walker. Originally published forty years ago, Alice Walker's first collection of nonfiction is a dazzling compendium that remains both timely and relevant. In these thirty-six essays, Walker contemplates her own work and that of other writers, considers the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, and writes vividly and courageously about a scarring childhood injury. Throughout, Walker explores the theories and practices of feminism, incorporating what she calls the "womanist" tradition of black women--insights that are vital to understanding our lives and society today. "When I graduated from college, my father gave me Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens . It was a beaten-up paperback in 1999, and it's even more battered now." --Jesmyn Ward.