Problems Facing Black People in Finding Our Mother's Gardens In Alice Walker's book, Finding Our Mother's Gardens, addresses many issues facing black people in today's society. The two essays examined here, "The Black Writer and the Southern Experience" and "The Unglamorous but Useful Duties of the Black Revolutionary Artist or the Black Writer Who Simply Works and Writes," are about the truth and beauty of being a black. The Southern writer and the role of the revolutionary black artist respectively. The first essay, "The Black Writer and the Southern Experience," deals with Southern truth, primarily in the era beginning with Jim Crow laws and extending to the present. Walker talks about some incidents that happened in the South and that even though they are shameful events, there is beauty in them. In one anecdote he recalls a time when his mother had to redeem a voucher for flour from the Red Cross. When the nurse looked at her in the clothes that an aunt from the North had sent her, she could not notice anything other than the shamelessness of those "niggers" who come to beg, wearing more beautiful clothes than hers. While this can be seen as an ugly and embarrassing scene, Walker sees beauty in the fact that this scene did not stop her from feeding her family. Walker states, “I long for the solidarity and sharing a modest existence can sometimes bring” (17). With this statement he talks about how the community of neighbors comes together to care for each other. This is one of the truths of the South. Walker also speaks of another truth. This truth is not universal, as far as people are concerned. Some of the same people who preach... middle of paper... should be hated... However, there are some men who should be loved" (137). I agree with Walker in this essay too. The way in which Walker tells his ideas is direct. His view of the world as a whole does not seem to focus on the victim mentality or the evil of whites as seems the prevailing opinion of some black writers of the day which is to be applauded. Walker states, “It is the artist's duty to present man as he is” (137) and it is this commitment to honesty that makes her a great writer I would call her a conservative womanizer. Her views and the ways in which she wishes to instigate change are not too radical to be mistaken for anti-society or anti-white. Walker realizes, as everyone should, that change takes time.