In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: of the need for female mentors

Alice Walker, famous author of The Color Purple and Pulitzer Prize winner, had a problem. Before she had won that well-earned Pulitzer, she faced an existential crises of sorts. Her way out? A much-needed mentor. She begins her essay, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" thus:
"I became aware of my need of Zora Neale Hurston's work some time before I knew her work existed." But it wasn't just Hurston's work Walker needed, it was Hurston herself. Attempting to research "voodoo practices among rural Southern blacks of the thirties" for a story, she discovered that there seemed to be little to no research she could trust. "A number of white, racist anthropologists and folklorists of the period had, not surprisingly, disappointed and insulted me. They thought blacks inferior, peculiar, and comic, and for me this undermined, no, destroyed, the relevance of their books."






How fortunate that she then came across Zora Neale Hurston's book, Mules and Men. Hurston, trained at Barnard College, was an anthropologist and a respected writer interested in black life in the American South. "Because she immersed herself in her own culture even as she recorded its 'big old lies,' i.e., folk tales, it was possible to see how she and it. . .fit together." Walker was soothed by Hurston's "assurance that she was exposing not simply an adequate culture but a superior one. That black people can be on occasion peculiar and comic was knowledge she enjoyed. That they could be racially or culturally inferior to whites never seems to have crossed her mind." In short, Zora Neale Hurston provided Alice Walker with the confidence and inspiration to pursue her then-current direction. Walker wanted to be a great African-American writer and she is.

Like Walker's unexpected but welcome discovery of Hurston, I began to discover a need for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich before I knew who she was. I was a little familiar with her work. After all, I had purchased her book, A Midwife's Tale, more intrigued by the title and the fact that it had also won a Pulitzer than by Ulrich's personal story, of which I knew nothing. It wasn't until I had purchased a second book, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, and began to read that I thought she might be the mentor I had been in search of. Reading in the introduction, Ulrich reveals a little of her own story:

"I was not only a thirty-six-year-old housewife enrolled in a graduate seminar in early American history. I was a thiry-six-year-old wife and mother who with a handful of friends in the Boston area had helped to found an independent periodical devoted to the "twin platforms of Mormonism and feminism."

Obviously, this unexpected interest of hers in Mormonism intrigued me. She continues, "Both 'isms' mattered: despite my flirtation with the women's movement, I too went to church even when it snowed." So I looked her up on (where else?) Wikipedia. Guess what? She's an active member of the Mormon church, teaches institute in Cambridge, and has an illustrious position in Harvard's history department. She's also a self-identified mormon and feminist. Fancy that. When I read about her that day, my eyes watered with gratitude and relief. No joke.

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Her balance more than anything else is incredible to me. Embracing not only feminist ideology and an active church membership, but also a career and family makes her a wonderwoman in my eyes. But, like Alice Walker, who never met Hurston (who had died years before, buried in a pauper's grave Walker found and decorated with a gravestone), I may never meet Ulrich, having moved away from the Boston area unaware of her existence. We may go back, at which time Ulrich and I will become bosom friends. (hollow laughter) But until then, I'm just grateful to know about her, read about her and read from her.

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Walker and I had different backgrounds, experiences and interests that led us to our need for additional feminine support and validation. Walker was a southern black woman who wanted to be a writer, I'm a mormon white woman who also desires something outside of the established norm. However, I think the differences between us are irrelevant; we found what we needed, after all.

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So I'm curious. What mentors have you needed or found? Why and how?