Apparently author Alice Walker is not regarded as mother of the year by her kids

[capybara]

I am dearly loving the term “whineschrift.” I am so adopting that.

[ArizonaTeach]

@Slithy Tove

Quoted:

“I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me - a ‘delightful distraction’, but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting”

I’d want to see the poem as a cite, but if this is true, it means AW asked for it. Or if she’d written an idealized, self-serving piece (kids used for publiciity à la “Here’s Joan Crawford at home with her happy adopted brood.”) she’d have asked for it, too.

Well, I’m not gonna say that Alice Walker asked for it, but if this is true, if Walker wrote a poem complaining about having a child and calling her a calamity, that’s pretty messed up.

That doesn’t necessarily give her daughter the right to complain (although it doesn’t prevent her from doing so, either), but any sympathy I have for Walker is out the window right there.

For those of you saying she should suck it up - I agree with you, as an adult, she should deal…but that’s a pretty damaging thing to do to a child, and goes above and beyond just being a distant parent. And while many are upset with Rebecca for going public with her issues with her mother for a quick buck, if that poem is true, it looks like Alice went public with her issues with her daughter while her daughter was still an infant for possibly the same reasons…!

[Freudian_Slit]

@OtakuLoki

Reading the article the thing that struck me the most about it was the sense that Rebecca Walker shares full measure of the certainty that she accuses her mother of having: She seems just as certain that motherhood is the one true way to happiness for women as she reports her mother as being certain of the opposite.

I agree…she doesn’t seem to come to any real conclusions, other than jettisoning the second-wave feminism in favor of motherhood.

Salon.com has an article on Rebecca/Alice, that is pretty sympathetic to both of them: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2008/06/10/walkers/index.html

[monstro]

I do think a lot of people assume Alice Walker is some supernatural Womyn Mother Goddess. If the article can break that particular misconception, then it serves a useful purpose.

But it does sound like the girl has some issues.