Sharpening Your Saw: Mind, Heart, Soul
Wednesday evening at the New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, Alice Walker, poet, novelist, and activist, was escorted down the aisle of the auditorium with drumbeats of Bongi Duma of the Lion King. As she walked down the aisle, the audience stood and clapped in awe of the literary queen known for the famous novel, The Color Purple, transformed for the screen and the stage.
Ms. Walker took her seat on stage with Dr. Traci Alexander, the host, to discuss her newest book of poems, Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart. Each poem has a Spanish translation. When asked why a Spanish Translation, Ms. Walker said her own Spanish was not that good. She lives in Mexico part of the year and has visited Cuba frequently. She had a community in those countries and wanted them to experience her poetry in their language. She laughed saying, “Their English is about as good as my Spanish.”
Earlier while waiting for the presentation to get started, I sat in the auditorium and thumbed through the book, which was included in the ticket price, and read the introduction and a few of the 71 poems. As I thumbed through the book, I noticed Spanish on the left-hand page and English on the right. Pablo Neruda’s Intimacies, Poems of Love instantly came to mind. The poems include English translation of original Spanish poems. Manuel Garcia Verdecia points out in his translator’s note of Taking the Arrow, translations allow “other people to gain access to an extraordinary body of feelings and ideas about human beings and all that shapes or troubles their lives.” He also takes note that translating Ms. Walker’s poems “expands her range of influence.”
Ms. Walker dropped some knowledge on us about her poem “Gathers” and “Is Celie Actually Ugly?”.
“Gathers” illustrates the fear of black men, the fear of black bodies, the fear of beauty and magnetic black men and black men in touch with their bodies. It is sad that the culture has frightened many black men out of their bodies. She insisted we needed a steady council of gatherings, where people talked about these fears.
“Is Celie Actually Ugly?” This question resonates from the novel “The Color Purple.” If Celie and Nellie were “practically identical” how could Celie be ugly? It was the word of Mister, everyone took his word over Celie’s. Ms. Walker said, “The perception of what is ugly is shaped by those who hate us.”
Her remark reminds me of James Baldwin’s “Who is the Nigger?” Baldwin explains in the interview that he did not invent the nigger, white people invented it; therefore, he was not the nigger. He goes on to say, “It’s something you invented, so it reflects you not me, it was something you were afraid of and invested me with it. I am not the nigger, but if I’m not the nigger and its true your invention reveals you then who is the nigger.” Thus, who is ugly?
In “Is Celie Actually Ugly?” the speaker wants us, the reader, to “think about/ how superficial is our understanding/ of beauty; but, also, how beauty/is destroyed. / And how, to bear our own disgrace/ these hundreds of years/ we’ve taught ourselves/ to laugh at anyone/ as abused and diminished/ as we feel.
Therefore, we must breathe beauty. Ms. Walker said, “We must have people to shape us, love us, tell us of our beauty.” And Baldwin would have affirmed this statement because “what you say about anybody else reveals you.”
Discussing “Is Celie Actually Ugly?” led us to what Ms. Walker did not like about movie version of “The Color Purple.” The pants and the ending. The movie version made the pants comical, and one size fits all. The hard work of sewing and putting together business is “no laughing matter. It takes dedication, grit, and sticking to it.” The shape of the pants indicates one size fits all and “everybody’s wearing them.”
Additionally, at the end of the book, everybody sits on the porch. In the movie, Mister is not on the porch. The film ending illustrates a lack of faith in the black family coming together despite the hardships and arrows they have taken out of their hearts. Ms. Walker has faith in the black family, that no matter what horrible situations they face the family will reconnect.
Here are a few more insightful and inspirational words the poet drizzled into our ears during the question and answer session.
- Writing enlarges your spirit because writers get better and better as people; thus, writers improve themselves as humans.
- Womanism, a term she coined, comes from culture and who you are; it does not dismiss feminism.
- Other people think about us [black people] more than we think about them.
- We are a nation of weeping black mothers.
- We have to take the arrow out of our heart because of the unbearable suffering that hurts us when we think only others suffer that way.
- What we want for ourselves, we must want for others.
- The condition that feeds your soul pushes you to write.
- Honor your ancestors with your work.
As my husband and I exited the auditorium, he said, “Listening to Ms. Walker was like sitting on the floor at Big Momma’s house listening to wisdom pouring forth. Words that live on when they are gone.”