Baby Love

Baby Love is an important book about motherhood for a new generation of women. An engaging and provocative memoir, it begins with the day Rebecca Walker discovers she is pregnant and follows her journey through to the day she and her partner being their son home.

Rebecca Walker was raised by her African American mother, the feminist writer Alice Walker who is best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Colour Purple. In 1965, when Alice Walker married Mel Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer, they became the first legally married inter-racial couple in Mississippi. They divorces when Rebecca was eight-years-old.

As a daughter of the womens movement and the first generation of women to believe that no job or lifestyle is unattainable, Rebecca was raised to believe motherhood to be one of the least empowering choices for a woman.

In Baby Love, Rebecca Walker confronts her family history and her own doubts and anxieties about motherhood to give voice to the uncertainty of her generation. Is it possible to balance professional aspirations and motherhood? Can you be a child of divorce and provide a stable and loving home environment for your baby? When is the right time to have a child? Should all women be mothers? Rather than a betrayal of feminism, might motherhood be a way to engage with important socio-political issues such as maternity leave and health care?

As she prepares to become a mother, she becomes estranged from her own as their relationship deteriorates and she make the momentous decision to distance herself from her mother.

After nine tumultuous months, Rebecca Walker discovers motherhood to be one of the single most meaningful experiences of her life and she urges young woman, and young men, to think strategically and much ealier about how and when they will have a child. She advocates that women should plan as carefully for having a child as they do their careers, and she challenges women to confront their ambivalence and uncertainty about the role of motherhood in a womans life it is an issue every woman must think about.

Rebecca Walker:is hailed by Time Magazine as one of the most influential American leaders under 40. She is founder of the feminist and activist organisation, the Third Wave Foundation, and the acclaimed bestselling author of Black, White and Jewish.

Baby Love
Souvenir Press distributed by Tower Books Pty Ltd;
Author: Rebecca Walker
ISBN: 9780285638204
Price: Hardback: RRP: $39.95