Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence

Overview

From the bestselling author whom Time magazine hails as one of the leaders of her generation, an insightful, moving, and entertaining memoir of pregnancy and the decision to conceive a child after years of uncertainty.

Like many women her age, Rebecca Walker was brought up to be skeptical of motherhood. A young woman's future was limitless, their mothers' generation told them. A child could rob one of independence, economic freedom, professional advancement, and just about everything else worth having. But all the empowerment and reproductive choice offered to this generation, Walker now realizes, may actually have led to a new kind of struggle.

For fifteen years Walker recognized a persistent yearning to have a baby but feared actually choosing to do it. As a result, she almost missed what she now knows to be the single most meaningful experience of her life. In Baby Love, Rebecca Walker tells the story of her pregnancy: not just the physical evolution, but also the emotional and intellectual transformation from ambivalence to certainty to unconditional love. It's the story of the birth of her son, as well as the tale of a generation-a wise, thought-provoking, and above all engaging memoir by a writer who has proven herself to be an important voice of her era.

Editorial Reviews

The author of Black, White and Jewishgives 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. (Mar.)

Author Information

Bio of Rebecca Walker

Rebecca Walker has received numerous awards and accolades for her writing and activism. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and publications; in addition to the international bestseller Black, White, and Jewish, her books include Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence, and the anthologies To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, which has become a standard text in gender studies courses around the world, and What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future. A popular speaker at universities and in business settings, Walker teaches the art of memoir at workshops and writing conferences internationally. She lives in Hawaii.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

Filesize

666.43 KB

Number of Pages

240

eBook ISBN

9781440662812