All about my mother

When Rebecca Walker wrote about her childhood as the daughter of feminist author Alice Walker, it was the beginning of a bitter feud, in which the literary icon famously gave up her role as parent. Now Rebecca has written about having a child of her own – a son who may never know his famous grandmother

THERE is, in the most stimulating interviews, a moment of absolute stillness when things hang in the balance. It feels a bit like throwing yourself off a cliff and simply free-falling, listening to the rush of wind whistling in your ears, waiting and wondering if your parachute is actually going to open or not.

This is such a moment. Writer Rebecca Walker, daughter of the American feminist writer Alice Walker, who won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1983 novel The Colour Purple, has gone very, very quiet. Silence tick tocks between us when I ask about the way she describes her mother in her new book, Baby Love. She mentions Alice in the same sentence as Marvin Gaye, who was shot by his own father, and I wonder if that's an exaggeration or if she felt genuinely physically threatened by her mother. Tick tock, tick tock. "I will answer this question," she says eventually, with a certain dignity. "But I think we should get away from my mother."

But we can't get away from her mother. She is a presence, a shadow, a benchmark, a foil. No matter where the conversation curves, it leads back to the straight path of Alice Walker, who has dominated so much of her life. Like Alice, Rebecca is a renowned feminist voice, named by Time magazine as one of America's 50 most influential future leaders under 40. Like Alice, she is a successful writer. But what might have been a matter for family pride has become acrimonious. Alice even wrote to Rebecca, telling her she no longer wanted the job of being her mother.

This is a clash of two strong women. Alice Walker is an icon but her daughter, too, has great physical presence. A sense of stillness, a sense, somehow, of her own space and her place in it. Her eyes are curiously lit; she is one of those women who makes you want to run round the back to locate the switch that governs this remarkable luminosity. Her prettiness is not characterless; there is too much sense of panther-like power for that. Intelligent eyes that curve gently into sleek, brown almonds; a strong nose made striking by the elegant, curved flare of her nostrils; beautifully shaped lips in a full Cupid's bow; a dramatic mass of black, corkscrew curls.

Baby Love is the story of 38-year-old Rebecca's first pregnancy, three years ago. It's very American: full of Buddha, multivitamins and natural birth philosophies. She writes notes to her unborn baby: "Dearest baby, Hi sweetheart. It's time for you to come out of Mommy's stomach." In advance, her 'fantasy' birth is that "Everyone I know and love will climb in the birthing pool with me. They will rub my legs and massage lavender essential oil into my scalp… Every half-hour I will be offered a fresh serving of pasta with garlic and oil, or organic chocolate cake. When the baby is born everyone will say a blessing from a different spiritual tradition before we cut the cord." In the event, she gets real and hollers for an epidural like the rest of us.

Rebecca as a child with her mother, Alice, and father, Mel Leventhal

But it is also the story of a daughter reflecting on her relationship with her mother as she awaits the birth of her own child. All her life, Rebecca had been encouraged to follow 1970s feminist thinking. The message she received was that motherhood stifled women's creativity, that it was a betrayal of everything that women such as her mother had fought for. Rebecca had always wanted a baby but it was only now, with her partner Glen, that she was able to overcome her own ambivalence, her sense of guilt and betrayal. Perhaps it was coincidence, but it was during pregnancy that Rebecca's strained relationship with her famous mother finally fell apart.

IT WAS IN the Deep South of Mississippi that Rebecca Walker's mother met her father, Mel Leventhal. "My dad was a very idealistic young Jewish attorney right out of law school," she explains, "who went down to the South and became involved in desegregating schools and fighting for sewage systems to be put in black neighbourhoods. He ended up being counsel to Dr (Martin Luther] King. My mother was already writing about the Afro-American experience. They married when it was illegal for them to get married and they had me as a way of continuing to challenge racial segregation, so I was part of the civil-rights movement. People called me a 'movement baby' because I embodied so many principles of it."

It is striking how abstractly Rebecca Walker talks. She intellectualises everything. Doesn't she mind the idea that her parents had her to 'challenge racial segregation'? Doesn't she have memories of childhood that are more personal? "I always say my life was perfect until my parents divorced. I recall my parents being very much in love, being very much part of this community that was idealistic and devoted to change, and feeling embraced by that community. I remember riding my bike down the street, having friends on my block, and my family being cohesive."

I quote to her from her book, in which she writes family life was about "conflict and psychological wounding, unbridled jealousy and simmering rage". Rebecca stills. "Jeez," she says. "Did I write that? Well, after the divorce my parents didn't speak for 20 years. My father married a nice Jewish woman and my mother got back with an Afro-American man and I spent my life going back and forth between these two very different worlds. Within the white, privileged family there was a lot of jealousy and contention – my brother and sister from that family thought that because my mother was rich and famous, I was privileged in a way they weren't; and my mother felt I had access and privilege through being with this white family… So it was a bit of a mess."

One of the most difficult things was the two different models of motherhood that were presented to her. Her own mother was so locked up in her work that Rebecca often felt abandoned. Sometimes she would come home to a note telling her that Alice had gone off for a week to be on her own. "My mother was this staunch feminist and it was very much about her professional career and her own development and not necessarily embracing fully the identity of being a mother. My father's wife was the complete opposite. She wanted to have five kids and gave up her career as a psychologist and therapist to look after her children. I think I was very confused about what model of femininity or womanhood to follow. On the one hand, the woman who wanted five kids was very supportive and nurturing, while my own mother was taking care of women all over the world but had some trouble tuning in to my needs. It was difficult in lots of ways."

Rebecca felt the confusion of being a mixed-race child. Of being the child of divorced parents. Of being the child of a famous woman whose public persona seemed to take over her private one. "Icons or public intellectuals, people who take on the mantle of world change and contribute quite a bit to humanity, often feel tremendous pressure to maintain their public persona and identity, the construction of who they are in the world, and that often has a strong impact on their children. It's something the children of famous parents aren't really allowed to talk about, because the pressure to conform to the public perception of their parents is so strong." Take Gandhi's children, she says. "They thought he was a terrible father. They appreciated his work but he didn't really have what they needed to develop as human beings."

Her confused sense of identity was explored in her 2001 book, Black, White and Jewish, which sold 100,000 copies worldwide. The book became the catalyst for the dramatic fall-out with her mother. Rebecca's pregnancy had already caused tension, Alice declaring herself "shocked" at the news. But then an interview with Rebecca appeared and an extract from the book was reproduced. In it, Rebecca said her parents didn't protect or look out for her, but fed, watered and encouraged her to grow. Alice was angry and said she was going to write a public letter declaring her daughter a liar. Rebecca went to see her. You think you're a good person, Alice told her pregnant daughter. But you're not.

The incident was the beginning of an argument that ended in Alice writing to say she no longer wanted the job of being Rebecca's mother. Alice does not come out of the tale well, but, perhaps understandably, one reviewer called Rebecca's public exposure of her mother "queasily manipulative". The problem for readers is that we don't know Alice Walker. Does she deserve everything her daughter throws at her? Rebecca claims her mother tried to stifle her voice. But she tried to stifle her mother's letter. What's the difference? If a mother should protect a daughter, shouldn't a daughter protect a mother?

"I really felt in Black, White and Jewish that I protected her quite a bit," protests Rebecca. "It could have been a very different book, and from the beginning I shielded her from a lot. So the fact that she didn't see that, and that it became all about her once again, was a problem to me. And I do think that mothers have the responsibility to support their children." More than children have to support their parents? "Absolutely!" It's natural for children to challenge parents, she says, and it's natural for parents to protect.

In any case, she says, there was a power differential. "We are talking about a woman who has sold millions of books, who is a cultural icon." But perhaps that's the point: when you have a public reputation, you have more to lose from public criticism. "My God," says Rebecca, "when you think of trying to silence your daughter's attempts to write her life from her own point of view… Black, White and Jewish was not some vanity book. There are mixed-race people from all over the world who write to me every week to tell me how much the book has changed and saved their lives. It's not some random book. To want to undermine that work is, I think, a bit pathological, actually."

Is it a problem, perhaps, that Rebecca is a writer? "Yeah, I certainly think that my mother would have preferred that I was not a writer." But she would like her mother's approval of her work? "Oh, God, yes. My mother has never said, 'You're a great writer, I'm proud of you.' I would love that. But what are you going to do? I have to move on."

But then that sense of longing intensifies because Rebecca says she really, really loves her mother. And for all her powerful presence you see that the woman who is a mother herself is, like most adults, still just a child who wants unconditional love from someone, and the most likely candidate for that role is always going to be a parent. In fact, you suspect that becoming a mother herself has made this longing worse, because she feels that unconditional love for her son Tenzin and she wonders why Alice doesn't feel the same way about her. Yet Rebecca's father always remarks on how, despite everything, his daughter still says she loves her mother. "To this very moment, I adore my mother. I love her dearly. And she has given me so much."

Did things not move on after Tenzin was born? "Not really." Alice has never seen her grandson? "No, no, no," Rebecca says. " No, no." She says no quietly, over and over like a verbal tic. She says it 13 times. She has initiated contact several times, publicly and privately, but so far Alice has not indicated that she wants to see Tenzin. How does that make her feel? Tick tock. More silence. "Resigned," she says finally. "It's sad. What daughter doesn't want their mother to be a mother to them? What mother doesn't want their child to have a grandmother?"

Alice Walker and Oprah Winfrey at a curtain call for The Color Purple on Broadway

IN OLD AMERICAN westerns there often used to be a shot of a deserted main street. The sense of anticipation was created by the empty stillness, complete silence save for the creak from some rusty old sign swinging in the breeze. It feels like that in the interview room, except we're in a flat in Bloomsbury, some welcoming flowers and a bottle of whisky on the table for Rebecca who has just arrived with Glen from her home in Hawaii.

She is not afraid of silence. She lets it build. Later, re-running the tape, some of those pauses last almost a full minute – such as when I ask her if her mother will find it even harder to forgive Baby Love than her first book. And that question about Marvin Gaye… yes, she felt threatened. How could she not, given the things Alice said? But, she admits, her reaction might have been influenced by her protective feelings towards her unborn child.

Her mother may have acted badly, but was she perhaps motivated by hurt? Rebecca Walker's eyes are literally, physically, widening. How, for example, would she feel if Tenzin wrote in the future that she failed as a mother? "I'd say, 'I'm so sorry. I did the best I could, but I'm sorry. What can I do now?'" She looks at me keenly. "Wouldn't you?" she says. I'd be devastated, I tell her. "No," she says, "but if your daughter said, 'I love you, but there were things…'" I'd be in bits, I say. "Are you serious?" Completely. Because I wouldn't be able to get those years back.

The parachute has opened suddenly, we've whooshed back up and are falling slowly in the silence, interrogation giving way to conversation. Imagine, I say, someone told her mother that her book was rubbish. Alice might be hurt but she could say, so what? Thousands of other people loved it. But if her only child says she didn't cut it as a mother… that's hard. Rebecca sighs thoughtfully. "I never said she wasn't a good mother," she says. "But I know what you mean…"

Children always say their mum is the best in the world. It's not true but it's a sign of their fierce, natural loyalty. "I've said that," she says quietly. Well, of course. "I love her," she says. "That's what makes it so hard." And does she love her because she's lovable or because she's her mother? Silence. Walker open her mouth then stops. We both laugh. "I love her because she's my mother and because she tried so hard." Her relationship with her father is positive, she agrees, but when she talks now she's clearly distracted. What is it? I ask her. "I'm just thinking about what you were saying… about when you try so hard and can only do so much."

Feminists of Alice Walker's generation were part of that first almighty kick against the system. A necessary part. But the tendency in that phase of feminism was to reject every part of the accepted role of women – which included motherhood. The only way to get equality seemed to be to claim women were the same as men. But later, the pendulum swung back to a more natural position. Modern feminists argue that claiming male characteristics is simply accepting male rules. Real equality would be recognising that women's ways of thinking, and acting, of simply being, are sometimes not the same as men's but they're just as valid.

Many modern women have had to prove themselves on two fronts. Often, trying so hard makes them feel like failures. So if their child says, yeah, you did fail, it's the most fundamental rejection. Alice Walker may have felt intellectual ambivalence about her role as a mother. I doubt she felt emotional ambivalence about being told she'd failed – as her excessive reaction to her daughter suggests.

Even Rebecca was surprised by the biological bond motherhood triggered in her. "I think I really believed that motherhood was something the patriarchy had designed for me as a woman to do, and that whole idea came into question when I got pregnant. I felt a strong biological urge to have a child. A strong biological connection. The feminism that I grew up in was all about nurture, but there's quite a bit of nature in there as well and, believe it or not, that's quite a controversial idea in feminism."

Despite writing about this primal bond that she says would make her kill to defend her unborn child, she also writes about having an abortion earlier in her life. Not that primal a bond, then? But she says she was only 14 and was still living by her mother's rules. "I wasn't independent yet, not an independent thinker." And while abortion may be a matter of rights to her, she says it's also a matter of grieving and mourning which feminism hasn't always acknowledged. "I still feel some loss," she admits. "It's a serious thing." Was her experimentation at that age with drugs and sex a sign of unhappiness? "I was just left alone a lot as a young person," she says. "I was lonely."

Perhaps it was a relief when she had a boy and not a girl? She smiles. Oh yeah. And if she has another baby she'd like another boy. I suspect she'd be equally good with both but her own experience has led her to fear the mother-daughter relationship. It's so fraught. It's clear Rebecca Walker and her mother are in freefall right now, and that's sad. But in life, as in interviews, you just never know when the safety parachute is going to open.

• Baby Love (£15, Souvenir Press) is published this weekend