In Our Mothers’ Gardens

The title comes from a book by Alice Walker, who wrote: “How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers’ names.” The third documentary sponsored by filmmaker Ava DuVernay under the Array title bangs drums of Black family history. Director Shantrelle P. Lewis celebrates all things family by interviewing a raft of Black women about their ancestors. Some sit and reminisce, some cook and rail, some show up in old films or albums, some rehearse stories their mothers told about their mothers. The stories they tell are magnetic, and this film demands attention.

In Our Mothers’ Gardens is a fearless, confessionalist record, from inside personal histories, of Black mothers and grandmothers, and it is steeped in Black love and culture. It can open the eyes of people who have no true understanding of the strength of family and matriarchy in Black communities. It is a celebration that reflects, through a wide diversity of real stories by Black women, the power, importance, influence, and, above all, the perspective, of Black matriarchy