The Colour Angry

elizabeth
#1. May 24th, 2008, at 12:22 PM.

Wonderful piece by a wonderful writer! Thank you for the link!

Peter
#2. May 24th, 2008, at 7:35 PM.

Ms Walker appears to be a very strong woman, but in some ways the sheer egregious cruelty of her mother enabled her to face the painful outrage of rejection head-on and avoid a life of conflicted denial. Some evils and outrages can turn out to be painful gifts. I remember reading the polemics of some of the early angry feminists from the 70’s and being struck by how common it was for them to write how their own mothers had sacrificed their “self-fulfillment” to the patriarchy and had their dreams of being famous actors or neurosurgeons thwarted by their domestic prisons. They seemed oblivious to the fact that family usually forces us to give up many of the self-focussed dreams of our youth (fathers too), but that good parents don’t lay the responsibility for that on their kids. The sub-text was always that such would surely have happened (because Mom had all that innate potential) if they hadn’t been so burdened. At some point I had a “click” moment and wondered what kind of mother would convey this kind of surface resentment so openly to their children. Surely a good shrink could be kept busy for years trying to unravel the pathos of their daughters championing them into adulthood.

My early childhood was very happy although my parents were terribly busy, encouraging me to grow up fast.

Yes, few of these kinds of parents will admit, even usually to themselves, that they find their own children a burden, but they can be very anxious for it all to be finished. The innocence of childhood is something to pass through as quickly as possible, while for a different kind of parent it is something they have to fight hard (and poignantly) not to prolong past its sell-by date. I think a lot of the early sexualization of children in our society stems from this, as well as the denial of many of the beautiful people of what a disaster it has been.

It isn’t all that unusual for the children of famous radicial progressives to reject them this way. Bertrand Russell’s daughter wrote movingly of the hurt and confusion she suffered from being a lab experiment in the service of her cold father’s gargantuan ego and how it finally drove her to embrace a religious traditionalism.

john begley
#3. May 25th, 2008, at 7:35 AM.

my wife had our last child at 41 years of age….so what’s the problem here ?

Kathy Shaidle
#4. May 25th, 2008, at 10:57 PM.

Being a writer myself, I happen to share Alice Walker’s ideas about the many ways children can undermine one’s career.

That’s why, unlike her, I DIDN’T HAVE ANY!

Life really is much simpler than most “intellectuals” seem to think.

john begley
#5. May 26th, 2008, at 2:34 AM.

far too many women were seduced into believing they had the parts to be something other than the noblest profession of all….being a wife and mother.

i recommend everyone go to youtube and watch harry enfield’s short flick (3 minutes)called “women, know your limits’…..it explains far more eloquently than i ever could the universal immutable facts of distaff existence.

john begley
#6. May 26th, 2008, at 3:27 AM.

yes…it’s confusing of course in that ‘le maitre’ Enfield subscribes to the ‘auteur’ theories but withal that this is the most succinct and powerful almost Haiku-like condemnation of ‘Woman’s’ pride vanity and misplaced arrogance i have yet to see…

i recommend it to all ” Mankind’ as it perfectly limns the wayward wilfulness “Woman’ has succumbed to in the last several of generations.

Woman!!..put thy vanity behind thee!!

Sean
#7. May 26th, 2008, at 10:01 AM.

“Being a writer myself, I happen to share Alice Walker’s ideas about the many ways children can undermine one’s career.”

They also make the career worthwhile. If you’ve never come home, had a small child wrap themselves around you and proclaim their love for you, then you haven’t lived.