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falturani's review against another edition
4.0
A quick, engaging read, Walker covers the terrain of her fascinating, if troubled childhood, split between multiple homes, schools and identities. Simultaneously, she paints a rich portrait of the different layers to American culture in the 1970s and 80s. As a child of divorce whose parents took two-year turns with her in different cities and then on separate coasts, she was often left to her own devices and had access to many different communities, of which she never felt quite a part. Walker has a great ear as a writer and a keen sensitivity to culture, gender and race, which together go a long way toward understanding not only herself but this country.
I have a guilty pleasure for memoirs, even if it's one I don't over-indulge. I may also have been partial to this title because of our shared mixed-race and part-Jewish backgrounds, and general political bent (Walker's a progressive and a prominent third-wave feminist). Indeed, while race and heritage are immensely important to Walker, she has never capitulated to what people, particularly from her respective backgrounds, have wanted her to be or expected of her. My own childhood was undoubtedly different, but it was interesting to see someone arrive at similar positions and utilize the same approaches to understand certain issues.
I have a guilty pleasure for memoirs, even if it's one I don't over-indulge. I may also have been partial to this title because of our shared mixed-race and part-Jewish backgrounds, and general political bent (Walker's a progressive and a prominent third-wave feminist). Indeed, while race and heritage are immensely important to Walker, she has never capitulated to what people, particularly from her respective backgrounds, have wanted her to be or expected of her. My own childhood was undoubtedly different, but it was interesting to see someone arrive at similar positions and utilize the same approaches to understand certain issues.
hollysue22's review against another edition
4.0
this book was very real. she doesn't hold back on intimate details and i'm ok with that. i mean, there were parts and while i was reading i was thinking, "omg. her mom is gonna read this." or "omg. her (insert family member here) is gonna read this." i'm honestly not sure if i could have been as open as she was about some things. i really enjoyed the book. i found myself frustrated with her parents at different times because, in my opinion, they did some jacked up stuff. the only thing i didn't really like was that it seemed to end rather abruptly to me. there was lots of detail throughout childhood but then when you get to about older high school age, all of a sudden she's an adult and it's ending. i would have liked it if it elaborated more on the older teen and young adult to whatever age she was at the time of writing.
booksenvogue's review against another edition
5.0
I can relate to the title. I am hoping that I will be able to relate more with the contents.
lpreadstoo's review against another edition
i started reading this because i was having trouble with rebecca walker's voice in "baby love." having read this, now i feel more ready for the second book. i would certainly recommend this narrative in its own right.
bookmama1980's review against another edition
A fascinating book and one for my daughter to read one day!
madfoot's review against another edition
2.0
Ech, I don't know what to think. I'm not so naive as to expect novelist Alice Walker to be a perfect person, but her daughter's tale of being left alone as an early teenager for days and even weeks at a time, eating fast food and schtupping for comfort, made me want to tear my hair out. On the other hand, there were amazing benefits to her upbringing -- an amazing private high school, jobs and internships that were surely easier for her to access given her mom's reputation -- that she comes off as a little ungrateful, as well.
I want to like her, but she keeps making it difficult for me. She never quite gives herself to her story; her style of writing is episodic, minimalist, and she picks up little pieces of story, blurts them out without preamble or followup, and then moves on to the next subject. She storms out of her father's home, choosing to live with her mother. But given the benefit of years, how does she feel about it now? Does she have more sympathy for him and for the stepmother who was clearly dear to her at certain points -- or is she still estranged? She talks about an obsessive relationship with a boyfriend in high school, describing how they flew between LA and SF every weekend, and then just drops the thread -- after declaring that her teachers saved her life that year, I'm left wondering: what did they do? Did the boyfriend get schmucky?
The woman needs an editor who can stand up to her! My sense is that she wrote this book and said "publish it as is, dammit. I won't have my voice compromised," and because her mom is Alice Walker, someone did. And she seems entirely blind to this possibility.
I'm set to read her next memoir, about motherhood, and friends already tell me I'll run up against the same problems. Ah well. At least this one was full of San Francisco scenes I found familiar and fun to read.
I want to like her, but she keeps making it difficult for me. She never quite gives herself to her story; her style of writing is episodic, minimalist, and she picks up little pieces of story, blurts them out without preamble or followup, and then moves on to the next subject. She storms out of her father's home, choosing to live with her mother. But given the benefit of years, how does she feel about it now? Does she have more sympathy for him and for the stepmother who was clearly dear to her at certain points -- or is she still estranged? She talks about an obsessive relationship with a boyfriend in high school, describing how they flew between LA and SF every weekend, and then just drops the thread -- after declaring that her teachers saved her life that year, I'm left wondering: what did they do? Did the boyfriend get schmucky?
The woman needs an editor who can stand up to her! My sense is that she wrote this book and said "publish it as is, dammit. I won't have my voice compromised," and because her mom is Alice Walker, someone did. And she seems entirely blind to this possibility.
I'm set to read her next memoir, about motherhood, and friends already tell me I'll run up against the same problems. Ah well. At least this one was full of San Francisco scenes I found familiar and fun to read.
msbookworm's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
dominic_t's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
fast-paced
4.0
Rebecca Walker has a fluid and engaging writing style. She had really insightful things to say about growing up as a mixed race person in a white Jewish community. I was really struck by her statement that she does not "feel an affinity with whiteness, with what Jewishness has become."
This was difficult to read because I was horrified by the sexual experiences she had in middle school and high school. She never passes any judgment on the men she slept with, and she never calls it abuse, so I don't feel like I can exactly label it that way. But it certainly seemed exploitative and was hard to read. It was also hard to read about how emotionally neglected she was. But she told her truth boldly, and I am very impressed by that.
On a technical level, this is not a typical autobiography. It's a series of vignettes. It's a bit hard to pin down exactly when things are happening, and sometimes the stories didn't seem to be exactly chronological. She also brings up stories with friends she's never mentioned before and she references them as though we should know who they are. So some of the stories seem a bit disjointed and unrelated. It's a stylistic choice that goes very well with the theme of the book. It really emphasizes how she moved between worlds and between friend groups and family. However, it was sometimes frustrating.
This was difficult to read because I was horrified by the sexual experiences she had in middle school and high school. She never passes any judgment on the men she slept with, and she never calls it abuse, so I don't feel like I can exactly label it that way. But it certainly seemed exploitative and was hard to read. It was also hard to read about how emotionally neglected she was. But she told her truth boldly, and I am very impressed by that.
On a technical level, this is not a typical autobiography. It's a series of vignettes. It's a bit hard to pin down exactly when things are happening, and sometimes the stories didn't seem to be exactly chronological. She also brings up stories with friends she's never mentioned before and she references them as though we should know who they are. So some of the stories seem a bit disjointed and unrelated. It's a stylistic choice that goes very well with the theme of the book. It really emphasizes how she moved between worlds and between friend groups and family. However, it was sometimes frustrating.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content, Racial slurs, and Racism
Moderate: Abortion
Minor: Homophobia
There is sexual content involving minors with older people.library_lurker's review against another edition
3.0
this book was really absorbing, but pretty disjointed. i thought a decent amount of it seemed like it was more suited for rebecca walker's journal than a published book. i wish there had been more of a narrative arc, and i also wish it had been more queer! we get an endless exhaustive run-down of her many boyfriends, even the ones that don't seem terribly significant to her life, and only a vague mention of the female partner she's raising a child with at the time of the writing. a big theme of this book is the search for home & the lack of a real home, which i could relate to because that's been a big theme in my life. loving women has always felt like home to me & i was wondering if walker felt the same way. but, we never find out!
that said, this book is really lyrical and certain sections pack a powerful punch. she says a lot of really interesting things about difference and it's still worth checking out.
that said, this book is really lyrical and certain sections pack a powerful punch. she says a lot of really interesting things about difference and it's still worth checking out.