“How was the creativity of the black woman kept alive, year after year and century after century, when for most of the years black people have been in America, it was a punishable crime for a black person to read or write?”
-In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens, Alice Walker (403)
Much like Alice Walker, I have unknowingly been in search of my own garden. And much like Alice Walker, I have always been enamored with Black women's ability to “cover the holes in the walls with sunflowers.”
How do we create such beauty, even in the midst of turmoil…anger…violence…betrayal….hopelessness…and hatred?
What Alice Walker taught me throughout this piece is the driving force behind who I am as a Black woman today. Because the truth is, it isn’t super-human strength that keeps us going, nor is it the notion that we are emotionless, either.
What keeps us alive is doing the work that our soul must have, ‘Ordering the universe in the image of [our] personal conception of Beauty.’ And that work is our own personal form of art—our part in shaping the universe in the ways we find most important to our community.
Black women: find the work your soul must have and you will find your garden. Because our garden—our art—can and will inspire the next to do the same.
– Imani, November 2026
Imani Foster is a native Detroiter who started her career in activism when she was 16 years old, fighting for education justice in Detroit. She is a proud graduate of Renaissance high school, and furthered her education at Northwestern University. Imani graduated with a double-major Bachelor’s degree in African American Studies & Journalism. Her commitment to focusing on creating and amplifying Black stories led her to continue the fight at 482Forward, an education justice organization, as the organization’s communications director.
