A Conversation with Rebecca Walker

A couple months ago I had the chance to interview Rebecca Walker.

We met the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington DC. It was a beautiful relaxing day – well, for me. I headed to the hotel a few hours early and spent the afternoon reviewing portions of Baby Love and tweaking my questions. I sipped an iced-tea. Rebecca was in the middle of her book tour, rushing around from interview to TV spot to NPR. I was her eighth (and final) interview of the day (unless you count her reading that night).

About three questions in she started laughing and saying that all the interviews were flashing through her mind. When I said I must be asking questions she’d heard a million times before she said, “No, actually your questions are a little bit different…more literary!” Well, what can I say? It was a piece for Literary Mama. For the official profile, visit this link. But for fun, here are a couple tidbits of our conversation that didn’t make the final cut:

On deciding to have kids…

Jenny: Do you think having a child is the biggest decision a person can make in life?

Rebecca: It’s hard to think in terms of the biggest decision, but it’s a pretty big decision, yeah. I mean, it alters things so much just in terms of your day-to-day life. I feel so rooted in life now because there’s this other person that is completely dependant on me. I just wrote this little essay that basically says, “I can’t die now.” For me, I don’t mind, but for him it would be a nightmare, you know? So it is a big decision and it does change everything. But it’s also a big decision to move to Hong Kong and make wooden fish and decide you’re going to be a nun or a monk. You know what I mean?

On women judging other women…

Jenny: And what about all the judging? There’s so much judging here in America on all the issues you touch upon in your book. Breast verses bottle. Cesarean verses vaginal births.

Rebecca: We have so many options that everyone gets polarized into these different camps. People get so caught up in believing their way is the right way. Then the mother-to-be gets sort of batted around between opposing ideologies struggling to figure out which feels organic and authentic to her. And I think that it’s kind of a blessing that we have those options, but it can also be kind of a curse.

And finally a little chat about birth stories…

Jenny: I love the fact that you chronicled Tenzin’s birth story. It made me want to call my own mother and say, I know that I was born at night 33 years ago, but tell me the real story. Do you think this will help him?

Rebecca: I hope it’ll help him understand certain things about his life and our life and the decisions I made and why. I hope he will see how I longed for him for so long. And how un-ambivalent I am about him being in my life.