Who Knew That Rebecca and Alice Walker had So Much Funk?

Rarely do we ever hear about black families, namely mommas and daughters working through the kind of funk that we experience with our mommas.

As someone who has had a tulmultous realtionship with my mother (I love her BUT she crazy 'yall), I felt Rebecca when she was comfortably ambilivent about being on speaking terms w/ her momma.

She was both optimistic and unsure about what she was going to do when her son wanted to meet his grandmother. With Bill Cosby going on all of his Black parenting rants, I realize that there is a lack of public discourse about Black families, and the day to day sh*t that brings cats together and also tears them apart.

What does Jordan's son have to say about him and their relationship?
Magic Johnson's children?
What does Cosby's daughter have to say about theirs?

Maia Cambell, now that her momma just passed?

Danny Glovers Daughter?

Peep what Rebecca has to say in this Times Review of her new book Baby Love,

But it is also unusual in that it is a pregnancy book with a message for women who are not yet pregnant, amplifying a theme Ms. Walker sounds on the undergraduate lecture circuit.

“I keep telling these women in college, ‘You need to plan having a baby like you plan your career if it’s something that you want,’ ” she said. “Because we haven’t been told that, this generation. And they’re shocked when I say that. I’m supposed to be like this feminist telling them, ‘Go achieve, go achieve.’ And I’m sitting there saying, ‘For me, having a baby has been the most transformational experience of my life.’ ”

It seems to me, from Rebecca's comment that historically, having a baby HAS not been seen AS an acheivement. And perhaps that is part of the problem itself.

Perhaps, like to our career goals, it needs to be framed as a something to work towards along with something that sorta just "happens", or someting that we are ambivlent about.

The artiles touches on what happens when your momma is a famous writer.

Ms. Walker’s own evolution, from wounded daughter to earth mother, was perhaps particularly significant because “she was raised in a more radical zone,” Ms. Baumgardner said.

There is a tradition of feminist writing about pregnancy and motherhood, but not everyone had such a complex mother-daughter dynamic to process.

Alice Walker “gave to the world this incredible thing,” Ms. Baumgardner said. “But what you want from your parents is parenting.”

Rebecca and her momma got some of that millenial funk. My sister and my momma funk like that. I think they ain't spoke since was '01. All bad.

Ms. Walker and her mother have a complicated love, according to Rebecca. In high school, Rebecca legally changed her last name from Leventhal to Walker because, as she put it in “Black, White and Jewish,” she wanted to link herself to her mother “tangibly and forever” and to associate herself with blackness because she does not feel “an affinity with whiteness, with what Jewishness has become.” (That last sentiment, which is echoed in other parts of the memoir, led several publications to criticize it for reinforcing stereotypes.)

I am curious as to what sterotype was she reinforcing?

Here is Rebecca's Blog.


In an Essence article from '95 Rebecca discusses the "Pine Box Incident" in a warm, critical and reflective way,

When I was just 8 years old, my mother had me crawl into bed beside her before asking me to take some dictation. "When I die," she said as if she were telling me which clothes to lay out for the next day, "make sure I am buried in a simple pine box. And play lots of Stevie Wonder. My funeral should be a celebration!" Dutifully, I began to write--"P-i-n-e b-o-x, S-t-e-v-i-e W-o-n-d-e-r"--on the yellow legal pad she placed on my lap. I don't remember what I felt then as my mother asked me to prepare for a time when she would no longer be present. Now, after reliving certain childhood moments in an attempt to understand them and myself better, I imagine that I did what I always tried to do for my mama. I tried to be who and what she needed me to be at the time. Instead of asking her all the hideous questions running scared through my child-mind--Mama, are you going to die? Mama, are you leaving me? Mama, who will take care of me? Mama, what about us?--I simply memorized the funeral plan to the letter and cheerfully assured her I would take care of everything.

It reminds me of how OUR stories of pain, love and forgivness are largely missing among the American pop culture canon.

I have heard similar fears from other women whose working mothers had leave them alone for greater parts of the day or night, depending on them to "take care of things"; or who, because of some other circumstance beyond their control, usually abuse or neglect, were unable to get the kind of constant unconditional love that young children crave. Listening to their stories, it becomes clear why individuation is often so difficult for young women. We fear that if we go our own way, off into our destinies outside of our mothers' desires, we will surely perish. We will die of aloneness.

Rebecca ain't never lied on that. Between my money being funny and the ice storm, my plans this last weekend were screwed.

I spent 30 hours by myself this weekend.
That was 6pm Saturday to 10 am Monday morning.

While I did talk to people on the phone, there is something to be said for spending THAT much time by youself.

I spend Sunday reading, making evidence flash cards, teaching myself the doctrine of functionality in trademark law.

I would argue that this weekend was part of the individuation process that Rebecca mentioned above.

My Friday night date w/ TL fell apart. I thought I was gonna go to Boston for the Black Law Student conference. But I didn't register and the ice storm came. I called him on Thursday, he never confirmed w/ me so....that fell apart.

Saturday. No conference.

Sunday. March Madness was poppin and there was a Knicks game, but nobody was trying come outside and play so I kicked it w/ the books.

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Watchall think about this? Ummmmm mommas and daughters.

What ever happend to Lisa Jones, Baraka's daughter?
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