My feminist friends have been teeth-gnashing, hand-wringing, and dabbling in all kinds of Freudian self-psychoanalyses since Rebecca Walker’s article, about her mother Alice Walker, broke in
Now keep in mind that The Daily Mail is a very conservative turkey and it might make better sense why Rebecca W’s article seems backlash-y, undermine-y, and badly researched. I feel no insecurity that the
While I’m not an outright fan of Alice Walker’s, I have to say that Rebecca W’s work appears to be lacking in nuance. I remember Rebecca Walker’s 1990’s sex-positive essay “Lusting for Freedom” as appealing, but in this here article, she alleges that her mother pushed her towards early sexual experimentation. So, umm—all I can see is how an opportunity to form a strong historical and theoretical center for her resentment has been wasted.
Still there is a lot of psychic pain here. And I can identify with the feeling of disappointing your feminist mother by marrying, having kids. Much as my mom adores her grandkids, it made her anxious knowing that i would no longer be able to put my ambitions first. And sometimes, she’ll still look at me all i-told-you-so and quote Sanskrit: Vivaham vidya nashanam (marriage exterminates scholarship).
So, so far, no solutions--just sentiment :). And oh, Blue pointed me to Rebecca Walker’s blog, which has a very different voice from the article in question. I skimmed; i kinda liked.
5 comments:
It's not going to be on Oprah.
Seriously.
Oprah owes a good deal of her career to Alice Walker (and Steven Spielberg).
Also she single-handedly produced Color Purple: The Musical.
No way would she invite that drama on her show. ^__^
I was just being flippant, Blue--hadn't really thought things through. I knew about Oprah producing Color Purple--but not that she had deeper ties to Spielberg and AW. Judge Judy then? I guess the big O is not even daytime tv anymore, is she? Or may be she'd engineer a reconciliation between them like she did for Tom Cruise and Brooke Shields?
(Did that happen at all or did i just imagine it? I ask because I woke up this morning in a panic because two undergrads were stealing my daughter in a tote bag and i needed to cut the bag with the switchblade that had materialized in my hand without hurting her--so i'm not feeling very present right now.)
I don't really think either Walker would go on Jerry Springer either...
Oprah was a no-name until she got cast as Sofia in Spielberg's film version of Color Purple.
She got nominated for an Academy Award and her career took off. ^__^
Judge Judy and Jerry would both be fair game, though... and what about good ol' Dr. Phil?
Or Dr. Laura!
Wow, that's kind of wild. It happens a lot though when you've got a parent who feels so strongly about a subject (be it God, feminism, whatever) and the kids chafe under that fervor.
On a personal note, when I was in college studying English lit, I was often one of only a few guys in classes and they would routinely devolve into men-bashing quasi-feminist rambling diatribes. I can't tell you how many times I heard people like Andrea Dworkin praised, and phrases like "Dead Men Don't Rape" repeated. It was that hostile environment that actually prompted me to leave school for a while.
I get frustrated just thinking about those times.
Post a Comment