Akram's Razor
Rebecca Walker, the daughter of feminist icon and author of The Color Purple Alice Walker, has publicly denounced her mother and her brand of feminism as hypocritical in a blistering and thought provoking article that, as if that's not enough to get attention, is also packed with dirty laundry. This really goes for the jugular.
Some might retort that this article is more a personal attack than a critique. It's certainly personal and polemical–and I'm not trying to endorse anything either way here–but then one might argue that Rebecca Walker is ironically employing impeccably Second Wave Feminist principles. What's that famous rallying call? "The personal is political." Women's experiences are worthy philosophical arguments in themselves.
She's revered as a trail-blazing feminist and author Alice Walker touched the lives of a generation of women. A champion of women's rights, she has always argued that motherhood is a form of servitude. But one woman didn't buy in to Alice's beliefs – her daughter, Rebecca, 38.
Here the writer describes what it was like to grow up as the daughter of a cultural icon, and why she feels so blessed to be the sort of woman 64-year-old Alice despises – a mother.
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