Women

by Alice Walker

BACKGROUND
Alice Walker is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and essayist.
She was born in 1944 in a small town in Georgia. Her father
was a sharecropper and her mother was a maid. Walker has
said that the poem “Women” was written for her mother.
Other important people to her were teachers: “I also had
terrific teachers . . . Right on through grammar school and
high school and college, there was one—sometimes even
two—teachers who saved me from feeling alone . . .”

They were women then

My mama’s generation A
A LANGUAGE COACH
Husky of voice—stout of
Generation comes from the
Latin root generatio, meaning Step
“to be born.” How does the 5 With fists as well as
word generation relate to its
root word? Hands
How they battered down

Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

Doors
And ironed
10 Starched white
Shirts
B LITERARY FOCUS
How they led
How would you describe the
Armies
tone of the poem so far?
Headragged generals
15 Across mined
“Women” from Revolutionary Petunias Fields
& Other Poems by Alice Walker.
Copyright © 1970 and renewed © 1998 Booby-trapped
by Alice Walker. Reproduced by permis-
sion of Harcourt, Inc. and electronic Ditches
format by permission of The Wendy
Weil Agency, Inc. This material may not To discover books
be reproduced in any form or by any
means without the prior written per-
20 Desks
mission of the publisher.
A place for us B

246 Women
 C QUICK CHECK

What are the women trying

to provide for their children?

D READING FOCUS

Pick one poetic effect in this

poem and describe how it
affects how you picture the
women Walker describes.
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

© Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress

How they knew what we E VOCABULARY

Must know Academic Vocabulary

Without knowing a page What feelings or images does
this poem evoke, or bring to
25 Of it mind, for you?
Themselves. C D E

Women 247
Skills Practice

Women
USE A CONCEPT MAP
DIRECTIONS: Choose four words that you think describe the tone of the poem
“Women.” Write the words in the blank ovals below. Then, in each oval,
explain why you chose that word.

Tone of “Women”

Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

248 Women
 Applying Your Skills

Women
LITERARY SKILLS FOCUS: SPEAKER AND TONE
DIRECTIONS: Circle the letter of the best answer for each question.
1. How would you describe the speaker of “Women”?
a. The speaker is a small child.
b. The speaker is a woman.
c. The speaker is an animal.
2. How would you describe the tone of “Women”?
a. bored and tired
b. angry and resentful
c. respectful and admiring
3. How would you describe the diction of “Women”?
a. fancy and formal
b. conversational and complicated
c. strong and simple

READING SKILLS FOCUS: ANALYZING POETIC EFFECTS

DIRECTIONS: In the left column of the chart below, create a list of poetic
effects from the poem. In the right column, analyze what those effects tell
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.

you about the people the poem describes.

Poetic effects from poem My responses

1. 2.

Reading
Standard 3.11
3. 4. Evaluate the
aesthetic
qualities of
style, including
the impact of
diction and
figurative
language on
tone, mood,
and theme,
using the
terminology of
literary criticism.
(Aesthetic
approach)

Women 249