I’m currently reading Alice Walker’s collection of poetry: Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart.
It’s a lovely collection of poetry. It includes a Spanish translation, lovely imagery and language, honors people like Mohammed Ali and Martin Luther King, and her poems ask great questions of the world and our society.
While there are many thoughtful elements in this collection that I appreciate, I think the epigraph at the beginning of the book is one of my new favorite quotes:
“If we want a better world, we have to make it ourselves.”
This is a quote by Alice Walker. I love that she appreciated her own voice and her own words enough to quote herself.
It reminds me of a quote from Toni Morrison:
“If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
I feel like that is what these two women in particular have done in their own beautiful ways. They have told the world stories of people that were not taken seriously in literature before they came along and made it happen.
Sometimes, I do get discouraged by the state of the world — on a Global scale our world has big problems that are entrenched and seem almost unsolvable. And on a local scale, I could go on and on about the worries I have for my community.
But, as Alice Walker says: “If we want a better world, we have to make it ourselves.”
And that would sound like a cat poster (thank you Lego Movie), except that Alice Walker has actually done this with her corner of the world. She has made it better.
And so can we.
On the Banks 