Kindred Spirits by Alice Walker
"Kindred Spirits" by Alice Walker is a poignant exploration of familial relationships and personal identity, told through the journey of Rosa and her sister Barbara as they travel to Florida to visit their Aunt Lily following the death of their grandfather. Rosa, grappling with the emotional fallout from her recent divorce, reflects on love, connection, and the transformations of her past relationships, particularly with her former husband, who has moved on to a new partner. The narrative delves into themes of race and intimacy, as Rosa contemplates the complexities of her mixed-race marriage and how societal factors shape personal bonds.
As the sisters navigate their visit, Rosa feels a profound sense of alienation from her family, stemming from different political and historical perspectives, despite shared experiences with institutionalized racism. The story intricately weaves together Rosa’s reflections on her grandfather, her aunt’s nurturing role as a foster parent, and the emotional tensions that arise during the visit. Ultimately, the story culminates in a moment of connection between the sisters, symbolizing their enduring bond and shared heritage, even as Rosa continues to grapple with her feelings of isolation and grief. This narrative invites readers to consider the complexities of family dynamics and the search for belonging in the face of personal and collective history.
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Kindred Spirits by Alice Walker
First published: 1985
Type of plot: Realism
Time of work: The early 1960's
Locale: Airplanes in flight and Miami, Florida
Principal Characters:
Rosa , a recently divorced writerBarbara , her sisterIvan , her former husbandSheila , Ivan's second wifeAunt Lily , Rosa and Barbara's mother's sister
The Story
Rosa and her sister Barbara are flying to Florida to visit their Aunt Lily's household, in which their grandfather has recently died. Still traumatized by her recent divorce, Rosa wonders about her former husband's character, the nature of their relationship, and how love and affection can be transformed or disappear. She and her husband are one of a series of sets of kindred spirits that emerge from the story.
Rosa wonders about the closeness that she and her husband shared despite the fact that he is white and she is black, how that intimacy and commonality changed over time, and how quickly she has been replaced by a new woman who is white and Jewish like her former husband—someone who can offer him a different kind of kindredship than she can. Still deeply pained by the dissolution of her marriage, Rosa believes that her trip to Florida is a kind of penance that must be paid to her family. When her grandfather passed away, she felt unable to face her family and chose not to attend his funeral, instead traveling on her own. Having returned from Cyprus and other travels, she has now recruited her older sister to go to Florida with her to make the process of facing her aunt less difficult.
At the Miami airport the sisters are met by Aunt Lily, who stands tall and dignified. She runs a foster home for a living, creating a home environment and pseudo-family for children separated from their biological kin. Rosa is struck when she sees Lily waiting in the airport that the older woman is what she herself may be like when she is older. She feels alienated from her relatives because her own sense of politics and history, which so much informs the way she sees the world and assigns value within it, is very different from their own. At the same time, she realizes that they share a common worldview based on lifelong experiences of institutionalized racism. Rosa recognizes yet another kindred spirit in her thoughts of her dead grandfather, whom she realizes had a temperament and habit of observing the events around him similar to her own, and at the same time, did things to women that offend her personal feminist convictions.
As Rosa's visit progresses, she comes into conflict with both her aunt and her sister, in part because of her emotional neediness, which they find at odds with her past lack of responsibility to family obligations, and in part because of her need to decipher meanings from her family's life—a process of attentiveness and documentation that she uses in her profession as a writer.
The story ends with Rosa and Barbara back on a plane, their visit ended. Rosa again contemplates her strained relationships with her former husband, grandfather, aunt, and sister. In her continuing depression, she feels cut off and alone. This feeling is alleviated at the last moment by Barbara, who puts on one of their grandfather's old fedoras—like the one Rosa is already wearing—and takes Rosa's hand, reaffirming their status as kindred spirits and their common link to the man who has passed away.
Bibliography
Banks, Erma Davis, and Keith Byerman. Alice Walker: An Annotated Bibliography, 1968-1986. New York: Garland, 1989.
Christian, Barbara. "Novel for Everyday Use: The Novels of Alice Walker." In Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Lauret, Maria. Alice Walker. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.
McMillan, Laurie: "Telling a Critical Story: Alice Walker's In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens." Journal of Modern Literature 23, no. 1 (Fall, 2004): 103-107.
Noe, Marcia. "Teaching Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use': Employing Race, Class, and Gender, with an Annotated Bibliography." Eureka Studies in Teaching Short Fiction 5, no. 1 (Fall, 2004): 123-136.
Parker-Smith, Bettye J. "Alice Walker's Women: In Search of Some Peace of Mind." In Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1984.
Tate, Claudia. Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1983.
Willis, Susan. "Black Woman Writers: Taking a Critical Perspective." In Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism, edited by Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn. London: Methuen, 1985.