by Alice Walker - Paso Robles High School

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
LANGUAGE COACH
Generation comes from the
Latin root generatio, meaning
“to be born.” How does the
word generation relate to its
root word?
Husky of voice—stout of
Step
5
With fists as well as
Hands
How they battered down
Doors
And ironed
10
Starched white
Shirts
B
LITERARY FOCUS
How they led
How would you describe the
tone of the poem so far?
Armies
Headragged generals
15
“Women” from Revolutionary Petunias
& Other Poems by Alice Walker.
Copyright © 1970 and renewed © 1998
by Alice Walker. Reproduced by permission of Harcourt, Inc. and electronic
format by permission of The Wendy
Weil Agency, Inc. This material may not
be reproduced in any form or by any
means without the prior written permission of the publisher.
246
Women
Across mined
Fields
Booby-trapped
Ditches
To discover books
20
Desks
A place for us B
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
A
C
QUICK CHECK
What are the women trying
to provide for their children?
D
READING FOCUS
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
Pick one poetic effect in this
poem and describe how it
affects how you picture the
women Walker describes.
© Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection, Prints & Photographs Division, Library of Congress
How they knew what we
25
E
VOCABULARY
Must know
Academic Vocabulary
Without knowing a page
What feelings or images does
this poem evoke, or bring to
mind, for you?
Of it
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.
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
Tone of “Women”
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
Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
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
you about the people the poem describes.
Poetic effects from poem
1.
3.
My responses
2.
4.
Reading
Standard 3.11
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