Excerpt:

Al-Zawahiri should have known. Extremists draw upon the fiery of soul, the passionate, who are desperate to act, who thirst to do something. Try telling a person of this nature that s/he must stay at home, picking up after children and washing up pots and pans. It doesn’t work for the men and it won’t work for the women.

My latest post is up at Religion Dispatches.

Muse has some poignant musings about the disadvantages of an elite education. I am often struck by the self-absorption of even many good, ethical, spiritual, and thoughtful students/graduates of elite schools and universities. There is an air of entitlement, which Deresiewicz discusses in the “The American Scholar” article, entitlement which makes many individuals solidly immersed in the self, which makes them a little less able to climb out of the self and experience empathy. They are able to envision new worlds, at times, for the world, and they are taught by means of endless learning exercises to lead, to manipulate people and nations, to handle large amounts of money. But there is something missing in there.

I shouldn’t talk, probably, because in Pakistan I went to the Convent of Jesus & Mary school and then to Kinnaird College. But once I graduated, I did the unthinkable and went to Punjab University for my Master’s. My peers were shocked. I had abandoned the Community. I had gone to the masses. I had joined a classroom of people who came from small towns and big families, who sat on the floor, and who did not own cars. I’m glad I did it. I am happy also that I am starting a tenure-track position in Oklahoma, at a smaller university.

As an observer on Muslim American affairs, I am often disturbed by the upward mobility of my own community. It is good to be comfortable and to be free of anxiety for the next day’s meal, certainly. But it is important to have your feet solidly on the ground, aware of your neighbor, aware of your roots and aware of the fragility of existence.

As my brother in Pakistan tells me, Pakistanis are talking about Pakistani Harvard student Samad Khurram, who declined to receive an award at Roots Academy from U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson in protest of US policies and actions, such as the bombing in Mohmand Agency.

He’s been in the papers and all over virtual Pakistan. It may seem like a great deal of talk for a mere gesture. A number of um, patriotic Americans may even find such gestures infuriating. I believe, however, that gestures such as these may vent some of the great frustration that the less powerful in the world feel toward US imperialistic policies. Such gestures enable them to hold their heads up high again for a bit, and, - well, - keep the peace a bit longer. Thank God for these gestures, at this moment in time. I don’t expect that anyone who should pay attention is paying attention to them, unfortunately.

Excerpt:

For years now, I have agonized, along with my friends, about the disproportionately large numbers of such women and the much lower numbers of truly eligible Muslim men. Many friends have wondered if “he” is out there at all. Many friends have asked me if I can introduce them to someone, and friends have asked me if I can introduce their friends to someone. I empty my pockets helplessly. Few that I’d introduce to them with confidence. The “good ones” are married, engaged, or perpetually single/looking. I can think of a number that I wouldn’t be comfortable marrying myself—too immature, too socially inept, professionally unstable (the perpetual graduate student, for instance), equipped with outdated gender norms, momma’s boy… I could go on.

It’s not that Muslim women don’t have problems. But there are so many of them that are single that the mind boggles at the future that awaits the community.

Read on here.

My post is up at Religion Dispatches.

Almost every article I have come across on the subject of the “Harvard gym controversy,” over the exclusion of men from the gym for a small period of time each week, has focused on the problem of religion and religious accommodation. Why should we accommodate them? Where will it stop? How many accommodations are we going to need? Why do Muslim women feel uncomfortable in gyms?

These are not the right questions. The question should be, why do some women feel uncomfortable working out, swimming, jogging, under the male gaze? Why do some women feel uncomfortable walking on the street at night? Why do some women feel uncomfortable taking the metro or the bus at night? Why would most women prefer to have sex-segregated bathrooms, showers and dorms? Why do women feel nervous when waiting for a bus late at night, and a man shows up? You could argue that they should “suck it up,” and “deal with it.” They do, in fact. …

Read on at RD Blog.

Because it’s Thursday, let us take a moment to remember how there was life before:

1. Credit cards. Yes, indeed. In 1989, when Uncle Mushtaq, our neighbor in Lahore in the PCSIR housing campus, had his total salary of Rs. 5000 picked from his pocket one month, that meant that that month was going to be a very difficult one.
   Uncle Mushtaq’s reaction? “Onnoo kadee thhod na hovay” (I pray that he - the pickpocket - never wants for money.”) I remembered Uncle Mushtaq’s prayer when my digital camera was stolen from my baggage at the Washington, DC airport in December 2007. May that baggage handler enjoy the camera. And may I buy one soon - so I can preserve my daughter’s age 2 memories soon. Which reminds us -
2. Digital cameras. Due to parties that will remain unnamed, my aforementioned digital camera did not accompany us to my dissertation defense. For some mysterious reason, Svend’s camera preserved the day in the form of darkened shadows. And that was that. If you lost your photos, they were gone. No files on your hard disk. So hooray for small, handy, gimmick-rich digital cameras.
3. Camcorders. Yes, our grandparents could look forward to that one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sit and pose for a camera, once every few years if they were lucky. And our children can have their motion and their voices captured for the future. Amazing. Truly.
4. Computers. Let me be the first to confess that the first time I handled a computer was in 1993. I wrestled with a colleague’s desktop Mac during my MPhil at Cambridge, and spent PhD scholarship money to acquire my first no-name desktop in 1996. From then on, I bought 2 Toshiba Satellites, one SONY VAIO (sadly deceased last year), and one Dell. Try to imagine how it would be to type on a typewriter, messing up an important document with white-out (or erasers) and re-typing all over again. And now imagine typing an entire dissertation or book in that way.
5. Research databases. JSTOR and EBSCO are my lifelines. I am speechless with emotion.
6. Email. Good God, email! I am from a generation of people that got email in their late 20s. As a result, I lost touch with school and college friends. Now, I can never lose touch with people, even if I want to. Nightmares of the past can “reconnect” with me through a quick, thoughtless message. Except people who live outside the US and Canada: folks outside North America cannot be relied upon to check email religiously everyday. What’s up with that?
7. Coffee shops. Enough said. Need I explain? Most of my work would never be done without these. Mobility is an amazing thing. You can now enjoy the company of your friends, and the ambience of a coffee shop while you work. Let’s take a moment to enjoy the fantastical glory of this modern-day reality. A change of atmosphere (unless you go to the SAME CAFE EVERY DAY), a set of fellow beings also working at their laptops, and catchy/hip music and the hum of conversation filling the silence–these things can, strangely, work wonders. Or maybe not?
8. google.com. Nuff said. You couldn’t ALWAYS just kill time by digging up every piece of public information about casual acquaintances, including mailing list contributions they’d made in the fiery days of their youth. You actually had to inquire about them, and care enough to find out. Now, you can do research about anything and everything that casually passes through your mind. Even worthless thoughts can result in additional pieces of information, but significant ideas can actually result in solid knowledge about Pakistan’s mountains (yes, look it up), the habits of seahorses (hmmm … right?), and the Pakistani diva Noor Jahan (go on, you can’t resist it).
9. dictionary.com for all those times you need to use the dictionary and the thesaurus but don’t have them handy. Now you can replace commonplace words with a choice of ten substitutes and brighten up your prose. But, on the flip side, you have no excuses to use “peak” for “pique” anymore. And yet this is happening more than ever …
10. Support groups: So the world is becoming lonely and isolated. And yet, today, you can google (or look up the phone book, if you prefer clunky), and find people who share your particular phobia, struggle, or bad habit. Writing a dissertation? Struggling to quit smoking? Pregnant? Whether online or in the ‘real world,’ you now have access to people who have the same problems. And they can listen to you. No longer are you stuck with families and friends who “don’t understand.” Brave new world, right?
11. Keyless car entry. So, little things make me happy. I acquired my first such car 2 years ago. With a baby in tow, I cannot imagine how I’d do without it (and yet the world does). Every now and again, I am impatient with the world, as I click my key-remote at my house-door.
12. Cellphones. Remember waiting for your dad to pick you up from school/college, straining your eyes to see his car in the sun, at the edge of your bench, with no idea when he would suddenly show up? I do. Now I drive, so I rarely wait for tardy picker-uppers, but when you do, a quick text message can conveniently tell you their ETA. And you can send them a quick nasty message to hurry the hell up.
13. Would you like to add more to this list so we can be grateful? We may live in strange times - full of Paris Hilton, reality shows, feast on one side of the world and famine on the other, and easy global exploitation by a small number of individuals, - but for a number of reasons, we can still be grateful for living in 2008. ….

    But do not forget that this is a list produced by a person who lives in the first world, a person who has enough to eat, who can occupy privileged spaces and benefit from the resources the developed world has to offer. For most people in the world today, NONE of the things I have mentioned are a reality. Whether we speak of the children orphaned in the Pakistani earthquake, or Safia in Somalia who has not eaten in a week,  - or even the “still separate, still unequal” state of American schools, most of these features of our brave new world are still dreams.

One night in the summer of 2005, I lay on my bed, angry and helpless about what appeared to be completely immovable writer’s block. I could see no light at the end of the tunnel; I felt like I’d never be done. The dissertation would never be finished. I’d never have the PhD. I’d never get a real job. I would always be in limbo.

So I got up, and, as we often do, started googling things. Running searches is a remarkable way of actually narrowing down what you really need. You start with one thing, and gradually, by process of elimination, you discover that you really need something else, but something else that is extremely specific. Eventually, I ran “Dissertation support group.” And I got phinished.org.

I’ve never joined “support groups” before, and the idea seemed hokey and unreal. This is such a White thing to do, I told myself sarcastically. But the dilemma was real, and the need for solutions was immediate. So I created an account, and started to read the forum. The outpouring of messages of encouragement, support, and advice was like cool water in the desert.

Writing a dissertation or thesis is a lonely, lonely task. As a graduate student, you are expected to be superwoman - you should KNOW how this works and you should HAVE what it takes. If you neither know nor have it, you do not have merit - and you deserve to fail and be ground into the dirt. If you seek out help, you are not cut out for the rugged individualism that the intellectual/work world demands. So what better community to seek than fellow strugglers and stragglers, who see their own and others’ struggles as both real and productive rather than as symptoms of failure?

The phinished strategies are deceptively simple:

You create “pacts” for yourself at the beginning of the day and share them with others. By experience, I know that this is much better than turning on the computer with just a vague goal of “work” at the beginning of the day. When you have no concrete goal, you are less likely to reach it. And worse, when you have no road map of what your NEXT goal is, you may be inwardly terrified of actually accomplishing the current task. The best time spent is the 5 minutes of deciding what your goals are for the day.

Then there is the 40 minute method. Modern work patterns are destructive to human capacity. You are expected to work nonstop (with a lunch break) from 9 am to 5pm. No one can do this. You go through cycles of productivity and non-productivity; you work for a while and then you blog or you surf the internet for videos; you work, and then you write funny or anguished emails. This is the truth, and the masters of industry had better accept it for their own sakes. As phinished.org puts it:

“The 40-minute method is one in which one does 40-minutes of sustained work, takes a 20-minute break, and then repeats the cycle as often as desired. This system combats burn-out and fatigue, and also does much to overcome procrastination and resistance. (e.g. “Ugh - I’ve got so much work to do, but I just can’t face my dissertation today! Then again, doing two or three 40-minute cycles doesn’t sound so daunting…”) You may find people using pact notations such as “3×40″, which means that they are going to spend three 40-minute cycles on a particular task.”

But one of the most important aspects of phinished.org is the community. If you are one of those people who work best by reading a self-help book in isolation with only yourself to cheer yourself on, good for you. But if such strategies leave you cold, then you’d rather work together with someone. The problem is, you don’t always have a writing-partner handy. Nor do your schedules always match. S/he might be too chatty, or too cold. S/he might have nothing in common with your field of study/work. S/he keeps bringing up her love life. Well, the virtual community gives you the benefit of just how much support and community you need.

I’ve finished my PhD, of course, and I’d like to give credit to the phinished.org community. I’m listed in their Hall of Phame still, and I am now returning to them because I have another case of writer’s block and another big writing task.

So tomorrow, I’ll be pacting again - for about 4×40.

God, grant me the strength to live in a world that does not acknowledge me as a full human being and yet to know, with fullest unshakeable conviction, that I am.

Beloved, protect me from grasping hands that seek to draw themselves upon my canvas.

Cherisher, grant me the strength to make it through puberty. Let me escape becoming an object in my own sight as soon as my breasts appear.

Friend, enable me not to be erased by the desire to be desired. Let me not build myself on foundations of water. Help me not fill myself with the emptiness of men’s desire.

Sustainer, as I grow to maturity, give me the courage to see beyond the imperfect world of injustice that human beings have created, and give me the vision to see the dream of beauty and justice that saints and visionaries have dreamed.

Omnipotent over tyrants, enable me to sustain my spirituality as I traverse the spaces of a world that tramples on my dreams – tramples them like a crazed elephant that knows not what it does.

Compassionate One, come to my aid when I meet love and injustice together. For in my world love rarely comes unaccompanied by the other. And if I want love from a man, it usually means encountering rejection of part of me.

Creator, grant me the strength to channel Your Attribute of Creation when I give birth. Support me through nine months of creation, and through hours of labor that rip my body apart.

Sustain me when a helpless infant is placed into my hands before I am even recovered from labor and blood loss.

Keep me from coming apart when an infant’s unending needs become my responsibility alone, and the father is responsible for playtime. Support me through nights of lost sleep and days of endless work. Help me be patient and eloquent when I’m told “This is what all mothers do, day in and day out. Mothers enjoy it. What’s wrong with you? Why are you depressed?”

Strengthen my heart when I am obliged to hand over my baby to strangers for care so I can go to work. And Creator, create a world where childcare does not have to mean abuse, neglect, and bottles propped on pillows.

Give me many times the focus and strength of a mere man so I can make a home habitable and a child happy and healthy, while I also work fulltime.

Give me the creativity to excel in sales, academia, cleaning, engineering, … even while my supervisors do not acknowledge when I excel.

Give me the strength to complete a day of work, before I hurry home to plunge into preparing a meal. And then give me the fortitude not to collapse inwardly upon myself when I deal with the man who buries himself in a TV show while I feed the children and tidy the house.

Originator, give me the fortitude to not smack them when they sneer and call me the weaker sex.

And Beloved, let the eyes of others see my dream. Let the minds of others see the possibilities of equality. Let men and women see full humanity shared by both, without either losing any part of it.

Compassionate and Just One, let my daughters see the world I dream of – in reality.

When I first traveled abroad as an adult (to Cambridge, U.K.), I was shocked by the nightlife. Not the bars, which I didn’t frequent - by the fact that shopping and restaurants closed so very early! I continue to be disappointed by the early closing of shopping and restaurants - except MacDonald’s and bars/clubs - and continue to miss the nightlife of Lahore.

Last summer, though, the general caused me some serious disappointment when he issued orders for the closing of business at 9pm! 9pm! in the summer months too! No one wants to set foot outside their home until 6pm unless absolutely forced to, and to shut down stores at 9pm must have killed business. I hope that better sense prevails.

Another thing I’d recommend, as Gulberg - especially the Hussain Chowk area and Main Boulevard - continues to become more exciting: expand parking and improve the smooth running of traffic. A visit to Liberty market in the evening can be a nightmare because it takes far too long getting in and out of the area.

Excuse the sensationalistic title but it’s been a while since I blogged and I might as well be punchy for a change. I just moved to Oklahoma to start a tenure-track position, and am exploring the new environment, the new culture, and a new house. The move and adjustment have given me very little time. I have dedicated most of my “spare” time to unpacking boxes, caring for a toddler, and completing academic projects.

The whole endeavor - trying to track a 2-year old’s whereabouts as well as work on a book project, while unpacking boxes and categorizing objects into closets and shelves - makes me look somewhat unsympathetically upon Rebecca Walker’s wholesale attack on her mother, Alice Walker. This is not because I am a fanatical feminist. As a Muslim woman, many mainstream feminists may indeed find much wanting in my feminism. And given my religious background, I do not feel the need to parade fanaticism in anything.

But I find Rebecca Walker’s “analysis” to be far more personal than political (piggybacking off of Svend’s analysis); I do not find that her factual evidence is establishes a convincing case (that Alice Walker was a bad, uncaring mother and a hypocrite vis-a-vis her own values and principles. But worse, I find RW’s analysis to be deprived of context and distressingly devoid of awareness of her own background and advantage.

It is not a bad thing for analysis to be personal. “Too personal” is how masculinist, hyper-rational cultures discredit discourse that they disagree with. But RW’s analysis in the “Daily Mail” article smacks of narcissism and lacks reflexiveness. Her subjectivity is frequently presented as sufficient evidence of her mother’s inadequacy. “When I hit my 20s and first felt a longing to be a mother,” she says, “I was totally confused. I could feel my biological clock ticking, but I felt if I listened to it, I would be betraying my mother and all she had taught me.” I know plenty of women in their 30’s who are deafened by the sound of their biological clocks but their circumstances (not their excessive independence) do not permit them to have children. At the same time, we know that plenty of teenagers and women mistake other personal issues for a biological clock’s ticking, hurry off to have babies, and destroy their chances for happy lives by having children too early. RW’s confusion is not adequate evidence that AW’s parenting and her principles corrupted her.

And then, she outgrew her “confusion” before the clock blew up, didn’t she? Is it she alone that takes credit for that? To rephrase an Islamic principle, whatever good in her, comes from herself and whatever bad happens, is from mom. So what’s new. Modern children have learned to blame their parents for every personal and physical flaw they may have, and to accept no responsibility of their own. Thank you, Freud.

As for her facts: AW traveling to Greece for two weeks and leaving a teenage daughter behind appears to me to be extremely careless, but parenting takes many forms. Moreover not all parents see teenagers as dependents. One may argue that this is clueless, careless and even criminal, but it whether it was “just plain selfish” is a matter of opinion.

RW blames AW for shuttling her, two years at a time, from one parent to the other. If she has the leisure to examine other children of divorced parents, she will discover circumstances far more terrible that children must grow up with. And why is it that Alice Walker and not Dad takes all the blame for this situation?

RW blames AW’s ideology for the fact that she started having sex at 13. RW is not the first teenager in the world to start having sex, and parental disapproval or approval or permissiveness do not play the role in the process that parents would like it to. AW believed that RW should have control of her body, and she did not prevent her from having sex. To me, as a believer that chastity gives you control of your body, Alice Walker was wrong. But it is not difficult to understand, in the 1960s (or even today). AW accompanied RW as she sought an abortion, and tried to be supportive, but this is not enough for RW. Well, one asks, does RW wish her mother had waited 2 years or 3 or 4 to give her permission? Which age would have been just right?

RW is devastated when (she breezily mentions) after an interview where she criticizes her parents, her mother calls her to express her anger. What is she supposed to do? “Go on, honey, drag me through the mud as much as you like because after all, I am a feminist and you should have the power to call me names?” One would like to have such lofty spiritual ideals but most parents would probably react to public calumny. RW never stops to consider how AW might feel about her interview, and merely calls her to ask for an “apology.” The narcissism is blinding. AW writes her an extremely hurtful letter, distancing herself from her daughter. Who’s more hurtful and selfish? RW seems to expect more from AW - after all, she’s the mother, right? - but why? And for all this, RW blames AW’s feminism rather than her personal qualities, or perhaps a combination of her flaws and those of her daughter’s.

Parents are human, and universally imperfect. Part of the process of parenting is the haunting realization that one is in charge of a child and one will never be able to care for her and raise her perfectly. I would like to find RW in the moments when she is sleep-deprived, hungry, anxious about the bills, and Tenzin bounds into the room and clambers up on a shelf that SHE left there by mistake, grabs a piece of crystal and tosses it to the floor - just as she is getting ready for bedtime. Moreover, RW may occasionally wonder what Tenzin will say about her writing and her frequent public appearances when he is grown. Parents lose it every now and again. Parents are exhausted at times. Parents struggle with balancing work and family. It is easy to preach universal principles at people: “Prioritize your children over everything,” “A family that prays together stays together,” and so on. How we put them into practice makes them ours. Many parents do an outstanding job. Many parents do an average job. Many parents suck at parenting. And yes, many parents don’t give a hoot about the quality of parenting they offer. Such parents may be feminists and anti-feminists, Republicans and Democrats, pro-choice and anti-choice, and from all religious and racial backgrounds.

RW is angry with AW for raising her with her convictions, i.e. that children are millstones for women, and that women don’t really need men. RW wants to prove that the opposite is true. RW should remember that she has ONE child, not eight, and that she is living in relative prosperity, not struggling to make ends meet in a dead-end hourly wage job at Kroger, and that she does have her partner to share the task of raising Tenzin with her. She seems to imply that most heterosexual women choose to have children without their fathers, and that it’s generally the fault of their rabid feminism and rampant independence that they don’t keep the men. She does not seem to see that there is no imminent civilizational pressure on men to choose between career and fatherhood, nor does she seem to question this.

Because of her agenda, RW doesn’t acknowledge that the painful “millstone” notion may have a kernel of truth to it for many women. It’s not the child’s fault, of course. But the woman who marries a caveman under social pressure, quickly has 6 kids only to be dumped and to struggle to raise them in a sordid inglorious fashion that brings Child & Family Services to her doorstep all too often - may argue that RW doesn’t know what she’s talking about. For RW not to grant these realities is to merely oppose AW’s black with her white, and these extremes are not helpful. We mothers would lay down our lives multiple times for our children: to acknowledge such sad things is not to surrender the glory of motherhood. It just aint no picnic, no matter how much you find fulfillment in it.

“Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness,” RW declaims. “It is devastating.” I hope that RW has statistics in her book, because for my part, as a woman academic, I still see yet another generation of women who mostly fail to get tenure because they are responsible for bearing, rearing and caring for the children. It is this default responsibility for children that is unjust to women’s life chances and careers. Sacrifice and compromise are, of course, an integral part of our lives, but sacrifice and compromise are, inevitably, the lot of women rather than men. In this respect, RW refuses to recognize the facts, and AW takes them and writes poems that call her child a “calamity.” (RW, a poem is a poem. Of course it must have been devastating, but it’s a personal expression of her experience.) Unfortunately, our culture still does not recognize child-rearing as work because it does not bring immediate financial returns. Women are penalized for having children, often both at home and at work but most often at work. This is undeniable, and it is possible that Rebecca Walker’s circumstances allow her to escape this lot. But surely some recognition of the lot of mothers is to be expected from - well, a rather fanatical advocate of motherhood.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe that children are a treasure. I believe that parenting - fathering and mothering - are spiritual and emotional experiences that should be experienced by people. But because I have a fiercely protective instinct towards children, I believe that there are people who will not benefit from parenthood, nor will they offer much to their children. There are people who do not miss parenting, much as RW would like to deny it. There are people who would prefer to use their good china and sleep in on a weekend and meditate instead of waking up bleary-eyed at 6am with the toddler, and hurry off to prepare the children to school, and then to soccer practice and music lessons and eventually collapse into bed, only to be woken by cries in the nursery. There are people who find the struggle empowering, it is the essence of life for them. But for some, it is not. For some, it reduces them. You should do what you can do.

I find Rebecca Walker’s dogmatism - Thou shalt procreate - quite disturbing. I do not see much wrong in some people choosing not to have children. In fact, there are people who one would rather not see having children, for the sake of the children. If a woman finds total fulfillment in spiritual and intellectual endeavors, or in gardening and entertaining, should she then MAKE herself have children? Would that be beneficial for her or for her children? If a man/woman was scarred from his/her life experiences and was at risk of being a very bad parent, should s/he then avoid it, for ethical reasons or force him/herself to procreate? There is not one single reason for not having children, and RW seems to live in too small a world - her own - to empathize with this. And her “hurry up and listen to your biological clock” is infantilizing.

I do not, also, see any wrong at all in some people adopting orphans instead of procreating (quite the contrary). And whether they have the “same feelings” as they would towards biological children is inconsequential, as long as they strive to be good parents. I’ve seen enough dreadful biological parents and enough stellar adoptive parents to know not to be dogmatic about that.

In other words, Rebecca Walker’s absorption by her own personal experience is excessive. She does not show much ability to transcend and grow from the personal. She says she is “happy” as a mother and that she “loves” her mother, and other writings show this, but her words in this article betray bile and even somewhat adolescent anger.

Feminism has made life easy for women. There is no doubt about this. Even the female poster-children for anti-feminism owe much to feminism for making their careers possible. What RW is denouncing is not “feminism” but bile, not independence but wholesale rejection of men, not un-maternal feminists but child neglect which can happen to anyone.

RW appears to forget that she was raised in relative prosperity by a famous mother and a White lawyer. Her mother, AW, was raised the “impoverished eighth child of sharecroppers from Georgia.” She mentions this, and she refuses to dwell on the enormous consequences of this background - racial, economic, gender. AW married in 1967, when slavery was in the not-so-distant past. RW writes today, 4-5 dramatic decades later, as if her motherhood and her embrace of a partner are simply her personal achievements and qualities. She writes of AW as if she, as a feminist, should operate above her context and pure of her background.

I am not trying to absolve AW of blame. Her behavior as a mother must have been painful to RW, and her neglect of RW must have been extremely difficult. Welcome to the club, RW. Who doesn’t have complaints about how their parents sniffed at their accomplishments, criticized them for their flaws and left them alone when they needed support? Who hasn’t been “lonely” growing up with parents? To paste all these flaws on to “feminism” seems to be part of an agenda rather than honest, reflexive examination of one’s past. But few of us are capable of such honesty when we examine our own biographies. Our own biographies are epics of tragedy, pain, and climactic success/failure. There must be drama in our lives, and its conclusion must be comprehensible.

What is sad to me is that RW seems to consider “a happy family” a choice. In our patriarchal world - still a patriarchal world - there are far too many reasons why this may be a struggle, an unattainable goal, for far too many women. RW’s vision needs to be broader to be broadly applicable. It is too colored by self. It is too reactionary. This is too bad, because it could offer much that is helpful to feminism. Scholarship asks for honest examination of all sides of a debate, and RW does not offer this. She offers an agenda.

It may indeed be that Alice Walker is a selfish, self-absorbed individual and a terrible mother, who never was meant to be a mother, who never wanted to be a mother, and who did a below-average job as a mother. But the jury is still out. In Rebecca Walker’s court, she is judge and jury. But to this reader at least she does not make a convincing case.