Novelist and activist Alice Walker is widely considered to be one of the most prominent African-American women in the United States. She was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, for her bestselling novel The Color Purple. In addition to her commitment to exploring issues of racism in America, Walker is well known for her radical feminism, even going as far as to assert that motherhood is a form of perpetual servitude.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Walker’s daughter Rebecca does not share her mother’s views towards motherhood. In 2000, she published a memoir, Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, which depicts her mother as a cold, uncaring and resentful parent who saw her as an albatross and treated her accordingly. Of her mother, Rebecca stated:

“My mother’s feminist principles colored every aspect of my life. As a little girl, I wasn’t even allowed to play with dolls or stuffed toys in case they brought out a maternal instinct. It was drummed into me that being a mother, raising children and running a home were a form of slavery. Having a career, travelling the world and being independent were what really mattered according to her.”

Because of the unflattering statements made in this memoir, Rebecca and her mother have been estranged since its publication. In a further act of rebellion, Rebecca also wrote a book extolling the unparalleled joys of motherhood, titled Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence (2007). From an outside perspective, it appears as though Walker’s daughter has self-consciously modeled herself in opposition to everything she associates with her mother. Yet curiously, she has clearly inherited her mother’s compulsion for self-expression and desire for validation…

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