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Rebecca Walker

Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence Paperback – March 4, 2008

by Rebecca Walker (Author)

4.0 83 ratings

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From the international bestselling author of Black, White, and Jewish comes a "wonderfully insightful" (Associated Press) book that's destined to become a motherhood classic. Now in trade.

Like many women her age, thirty-four-year-old Rebecca Walker was brought up to be skeptical of motherhood. As an adult she longed for a baby but feared losing her independence. In this very smart memoir, Walker explores some of the larger sociological trends of her generation while delivering her own story about the emotional and intellectual transformation that led her to motherhood.

Print length

240 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Riverhead Books
Publication date

March 4, 2008
Dimensions

5.23 x 0.7 x 7.97 inches
ISBN-10

1594482888
ISBN-13

978-1594482885
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Thoughtful." -Entertainment Weekly "A powerful new memoir...Accessible and richly textured, told with humor, wit, and warmth." -Publishers Weekly "Moving, wise, and deeply honest, Baby Love has illuminated a crucial question for our times." -Danzy Senna, author of Caucasia "Shares the earthy, spontaneous form of Anne Lamott's child-rearing classic, Operating Instructions." -The New York Times

About the Author

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Riverhead Books (March 4, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1594482888
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1594482885
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.1 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.23 x 0.7 x 7.97 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #485,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #559 in Parenting Girls
- #888 in Pregnancy & Childbirth (Books)
- #1,420 in Motherhood (Books)

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4.0 83 ratings

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Rebecca Walker

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Rebecca Walker was chosen as one of Time magazine's fifty future leaders of America, one of the most influential leaders of her generation. She has made a substantial contribution to the global conversation about identity, power, culture, and the evolution of the human family through books, lectures, blogs, social networks, popular magazines, literary and academic journals, radio programs, film and television appearances and content development. She graduated cum laude from Yale in 1992.

She is the author of the memoirs Black, White and Jewish and Baby Love; the novel Adé: A Love Story; and editor of the anthologies To Be Real, What Makes a Man, One Big Happy Family, and Black Cool. Her writing has appeared in Glamour, the Washington Post, Bookforum, BOMB, Newsweek, Vibe, Real Simple, Modern Bride, Essence, More and Interview, among many other magazines and literary collections. She has appeared on Charlie Rose, Good Morning America, Oprah, Fresh Air, BET, and dozens of blogs, sites, and other media. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is hard at work on both a new novel and a television pilot.

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Everleigh

Making a choice for immortality

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2008

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I loved this book. As a woman of about the same age having a child at the same time of year, reading BABY LOVE was for me like reading my own story at times.

Like Anne Lamott's OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS, BABY LOVE traces an independent woman's choice to bring a child into a frightening world, defying that very world with hope against realism. However, there's another aspect that figures prominently, one that I'm certain many women experience but rarely acknowledge to themselves, or at the very least to any beyond their own close circle: the baggage of becoming a mother after a difficult childhood themselves. Raised by mothers who came of age in the 1960s--the first generation to fully, clearly focus on the repercussions of family over freedom, obligation over instinct--Walker examines her choice to even want to start a family, and weighs her experience against her own mother's input. If nothing else, we children of those women have learned what NOT to do to the next generation.

Surrounded by a devoted circle of friends and enveloped in warmth, Walker and her partner enlarge their chosen tribe, and in doing so draw us in. Readers who find the telling 'narcissistic,' I'm afraid, are missing the point; it is absolutely true that you must love yourself before you love another, and sometimes it takes tremendous self-examination to bring forth that rawest, barest emotional place to make that home for a person sharing a space that's more intimate than a heart.

BABY LOVE is honest, funny, cathartic, intimate and REAL. And, like childbirth itself, its touch can be brutal at times. But choose to read it, and be enriched.

4 people found this helpful

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Juniper

I wanted to like this book...

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2013

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Really, I did. I think that Rebecca Walker has an amazing voice, and she's someone who I wanted to be able to relate to. Her writing style itself is beautiful and she's able to vocalize a lot of the emotional tumult that motherhood brings to the table, but I can't get past how narcissistic and privileged she is. The entire story of her pregnancy sounds like the diary rants of an angry teenager who's fighting with her mommy. She makes irresponsible choices during her pregnancy but acts like she's some kind of hero for simply surviving it. Honey, women have been giving birth for millions of years, and yes, most of the time, we did it without drugs and without gaining sixty pounds. She doesn't need to be shamed for the choices she made, but they don't exactly deserve applause, either.

Her tone and attitudes switch so rapidly that Ms. Walker sometimes seems like her life has just been one huge identity crisis after another-- one minute a radical vegan, the next, shoving steaks down her throat at the speed of light. One minute acknowledging her privilege, the next, acting like her life is unimaginably difficult even though she's obscenely wealthy and hasn't had to work or support herself at all. One minute talking about her "son"-- the child of a woman she'd played house with for a couple of years-- and the next, declaring that he really isn't her son because adoption is not at all like being a real mom (what a HUGE insult to adoptive parents!). I read the whole book wondering who the heck Rebecca Walker actually is, because she can't seem to make up her mind.

I really did want to like this book, but I just didn't. If Rebecca could get over her narcissism just a bit, she might have the capacity to be a talented author. For now, though, nuh-uh.

16 people found this helpful

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ilanos

Cries of a pregnant daughter who has not made peace with her own mother

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2011

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This book stems from a pregnant daughter's search for trust in herself. The trust vital to go through pregnancy and achieve motherhood. The inability to trust her mother from her childhood seems to be the underlying cause. Education, partners, career nothing seem to provide compensation for that lack of trust.

RW is not alone in this predicament. She is articulating for a lot of women. Women who have no trust issues in their important relationships specially mother/daughter relationship will not be able to identify with RW and the book. They may still find interesting the details of what steps todays women are taking during pregnancy. I found the doola issue instructive. Maybe because I am a first generation immigrant engaged in scientific endeavor and do not have enough real life examples.

I hope RW goes past the mistrust issue now that she is herself a mother. A lot of us who are not self-aware propagate these issues to the next generation involuntarily. I am waiting for her next book............

7 people found this helpful

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Vav

This is a good book that I enjoyed reading because

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2014

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This is a good book that I enjoyed reading because, presumably, I'm Ms. Walker's target audience. It is very good at addressing the ambivalence many women feel at a certain age, when career pulls in one direction and the prospect of motherhood in another--and the tone is very reassuring; Rebecca's thesis, essentially, is that if you feel at all pulled to motherhood, you need to plan for it and you won't regret it. There's also the scattered references to the elder Ms. Walker which has a certain tabloid and voyeuristic appeal and the complexity of the relationship is one I'm sure many daughters (and mothers) will relate to. I read Anne Lamott's classic Operating Instructions right after this and--as they are in a similar format (diary entries)--comparisons are inevitable. If I had to pick just one to read, I'd go with Lamott's in a heartbeat but this is an honest book with a lot of heart and insight as well (so read both if you can).

One person found this helpful

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Mizukan

Unwarranted criticism

Reviewed in the United States on July 30, 2007

Verified Purchase

Actually, I'd rate it a 4.5. After reading the many negative reviews posted here, I was fully prepared to hate this book. Now that I'm done, I must say that I loved Baby Love and I cannot understand why so many people had a problem with it. It may not have been filled with warm fuzzy musings about motherhood, but it was her experience and her truth and I respect Walker's courage to share it. As a woman currently considering motherhood after years of being certain that it was not for me, I found her story both familiar and encouraging. I wish her and her family the best!

7 people found this helpful

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Blanca A.A.

Just the writer's personal experience

Reviewed in Spain on December 30, 2012

Verified Purchase

This book walk us through the writer's pregnancy, providing us with lots of details, but I have missed the feminism point of view. I think it is quite frivolous, probably because I was looking for some deep and thorough reflection about motherhood in general, while the author just relates her own experience.
It has been easy to read, entertaining, but that is all: only the experience of a privileged young woman, whose main concerns are how to save enough money to send her to-be-son to Hardvard and where to deliver her baby: at home or at fancy private hospital. There are no reflexion about the difficulties of motherhood nowadays, about the men involvement, nothing.

I would not recommend it.

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