of lineage. It is a topic that many people think
about from the time they begin to talk and con-
tinue to think about throughout their lives. Line-
age implies the question, Where did I come from?
Though it is not necessaryto know the answer to
this question in order to survive, it is comforting to
most people to have some idea of who their ances-
tors were. The termlineageitself suggests that there
are lines that can be drawn from one’s birth back-
ward into the past. These lines go through the
births of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and so
on. Knowing one’s lineage can provide hints as to
a person’s strengths and weaknesses, talents and
skills. Lineage might also offer a way to compare
oneself, to take stock of oneself, as the speaker in
Walker’s poem does.
Walker’s lineage in this poem begins and ends
with grandmothers. She skips over mothers and
does not mention great-grandmothers, at least not
overtly. However, if onetakes a broader view of
the poem, it is clear that mothers and great-grand-
mothers are all included. Walker is speaking not
just of a particular grandmother but further of all
women who have produced children, who have
reared children and provided for them. Walker
writes about the image of grandmothers and how
they are remembered.
Those who are fortunate enough to have
loving relationships with their grandmothers
often store memories thatare somewhat distorted.
Many of the memories that are collected while a
person isstill very young are tender. Traditionally,
throughout many cultures, a grandmother’s role
is not disciplinarian, even if a grandmother often
tends to the needs of a child. The mother and
father provide the discipline, so grandmothers
can bypass this role, which is often contrary to
children’s perceived interests, and therefore might
be remembered in a more mythical manner. For
instance, in Walker’s poem, the speaker focuses on
the grandmothers’ strength and not on their weak-
nesses. Their strength is both physical and psycho-
logical, and it is obvious that the speaker is not
only proud of her grandmothers’ power but also
somewhatinaweofit.Onecansensethatthe
speakeradmireshergrandmothersasonemight
a hero. The image of a hero is an archetypal one,
a common universal figure. People need heroes
to emulate, to act as models who will lead them
through their own challenges. Stories of heroes are
created in every culture.
Another image that the grandmothers bring is
that of creativity. Readers can find images of
creativity in the poem on several different levels.
The grandmothers are not only out in the field
working hard but also are making seeds grow.
This image is one of the grandmothers providing
nourishment. The seeds will grow into food. There
is also the hint of creativity in the arts. The grand-
mothers create music, which one might say nour-
ishes the soul. Another aspect is that of the human
creativity of giving birth to children. A grand-
mother would not be a grandmother if she had
not given birth to a child. So the grandmothers
also stand for the universal image of procreation,
as they are the creators of the lineage of the family.
Few events are more universal than the birth
of a child.
The speaker also shares gentle, sensual mem-
ories of the grandmothers. Cannot many children
remember watching their grandmothers at work in
the kitchen or smelling the sweet scent of soap that
emanates from their grandmothers’ skin? Through
the speaker’s sharing of her memories of her
grandmothers, readers’ memories of their grand-
mothers will be stirred. The memories might be of
different scents and different words, so it is not the
specific set of images that the poet offers but rather
the idea of grandmother-type memories that is
universal.
Finally, there is the closing question that the
speaker asks. She wonders why she is not like her
grandmothers. Grandmothers are necessarily from
other times, other circumstances. The speaker and
her grandmother are separated by at least thirty-
five or forty years or more. Those years represent
not only changes in culture, society, and the world
but also distortions in memory. A child watches a
grandmother move through the world from the
perspective of someone not yet fully aware of
the circumstances of that world. As the child
grows older, those memories may remain some-
whataskewofwhatthegrandmother’s reality
was truly like. The child might have romanticized
the attributes of his or her grandmother. The labor,
for instance, is viewed by the child but not felt.
Grandmothers are perhaps seen as being unfail-
ingly strong, though surely they had times of weak-
ness. The songs at the end of the day may express
sorrows that the child does not understand. When
the child reaches adulthood, these perceptions may
be retained. In comparing herself to her grand-
mothers, the speaker of this poem questions why
shecannotmeetherchallengeswithasmuchfor-
titude as her grandmothers did. As anyone
looks back through memories, it is commonLineage