Baby Love

January 29, 2007
The author of Black, White and Jewish
gives voice to the uncertainty of her generation in a powerful new memoir. In journal format, beginning with the day her pregnancy is confirmed and ending as she and her partner bring their son home, Walker tells of her physical and emotional journey toward motherhood, poignantly reflecting on the ambivalence that has delayed her dream of having a child for years. Like many 20- and 30-somethings, she was raised to view partnership and parenthood as the least empowering choices in an infinite array of options. This tension comes to the fore as Walker's mother, Alice Walker, opposes her decision to have a baby and challenges her account of their relationship in Black, White and Jewish
. Alice ends their relationship and removes Rebecca from her will, and Rebecca endures a tumultuous pregnancy, estranged from her mother as she prepares to become one herself. Elusive health complications arise, and she hops from doctor to doctor, ever wary of Western medicine. Through a lengthy litany of decisions (midwife versus M.D., stroller versus "travel system"), she Googles her way to information overload. At the end of this nine-month mental tug-of-war, she emerges changed: a meat eater, a committed partner with a renewed faith in intimacy, a new woman plus-one. Walker's story is accessible and richly textured, told with humor, wit and warmth.

February 15, 2007
Third-wave feminist Walker, the daughter of author Alice Walker and a best-selling scribe in her own right (see her "Black, White, and Jewish: An Autobiography of a Shifting Self)", continues chronicling her life with this journal of her decision to become a mother in her mid-thirties. Unfortunately, though Walker is an able writer, her experiences with pregnancy and childbirth come across as shallow and lack insight. At no point, for example, does the author explain her move from a homosexual relationship to a heterosexual one involving motherhood. On the loaded subject of chilren of famous parents, readers get merely a few sentences. The narrative improves at the end when Walker describes the birth and how she dealt with her infant's medical problems, but overall, this is not the deep, considered meditation that the author's peers probably crave and deserve. Yet Walker's work will no doubt do well owing to her celebrity, the titillating details she offers about her conflict with her famous mother, and the window she provides readers into her lavish lifestyle. Most suitable for public libraries. Readers looking for a more thoughtful consideration would enjoy Anne Lamott's "Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year". [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 11/1/06.]Fran Mentch, Cleveland State Univ. Lib., OH

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