The Garden Of Diversity: The Flowers By Alice Walker

The Garden of Diversity: How “The Flowers” helped me understand my own experience. The words immortalized in Alice Walker’s short story “The Flowers” resonated with me in a profound manner. Myop’s adventure from the property that her family shares to the woods is one that she has embarked upon many times before. This time even though she doesn’t realize it, everything will be different. Walker’s character may not understand the consequences that come with the encounter with the lynched black man, the thought that crosses my mind while reading this is that although she has no idea of what awaits her in the future, of the cruelty and injustice that unfortunately runs rampant in today’s society, she can still find a place to be proud and hopeful of who she is.

Although she does not yet realize it, these are all factors that will shape her life. Growing up Hispanic in the United States, I didn’t actually recognize that I was different from most of my classmates until I was probably about six or seven years old. Although English was my first language, my parents would always speak to my brother and I in Spanish, especially at home and we would usually answer back in English and getting reprimanded in Spanish in front of friends was always embarrassing. I always felt so lucky to not have an accent while speaking English because even as a child I would notice how my parents or other family would receive a completely different treatment than I would. Attending elementary and middle school in Raleigh, North Carolina, my mother would often pack arepas for lunch, an unexpected option in a sea of PB & J’s. I would very often face not only a flurry of questions, but weird looks from the rest of my