About Rebecca Walker

I'm  a writer. I'm black, white, and Jewish. Which means I'm Jewish sometimes. At seder. At the nursing home where my grandmother doesn't recognize me. At Channukah when I put a little extra ghelt in my four year old son's 529 college savings plan. The rest of the time I'm Buddhist. And a mom. And black. And a writer. My first memoir, Black, White and Jewish describes this all personally, emotionally, exhaustively. It's very Jewish. And black. And Buddhist. I live in Hawaii. Where everyone is everything except, it seems, Jewish.

The Untouchable Michael Jackson

By Rebecca Walker July 9, 2009

I met Michael Jackson in 1984. We were both guests of Quincy Jones and Steven Spielberg at Amblin, Spielberg’s production company on the Universal film lot. Whoopi Goldberg was preparing to play Celie, the protagonist in the film version of … Read More

Nadya Suleman: Taking One For the Team

By Rebecca Walker February 22, 2009

Since we’re still talking obsessively about Nadya Suleman, or "Octomom" as she’s been called in the press, let’s talk about non-traditional families and the way they are demonized in American popular culture. Make no mistake, I wouldn’t have fourteen kids. … Read More

The Family That Argues Together…

By Rebecca Walker February 18, 2009

Today my guy told me about a bit Jon Stewart did on why Jews argue. Apparently, a "reporter" goes and asks a bunch of Jews why they argue all the time, and they start arguing about who should answer the … Read More

Note to Self: Adapt

By Rebecca Walker February 17, 2009

Today, gay marriage is legal in two states, and nine million Americans identify as multiracial. Almost half of all parents are unmarried. Two million children in America are adopted, 4 million are stepchildren, five million live with unauthorized immigrant families. … Read More

Happy or dysfunctional? Says who?

By Rebecca Walker February 16, 2009

Rebecca Walker, author of One Big Happy Family, is guest blogging this week as one of Jewcy‘s Lit Klatsch bloggers. Walker’s book is a collection of essays about how the American traditional nuclear family has changed. It’s late and the … Read More

Maternal Envy: Fact or Fiction

By Rebecca Walker December 16, 2008

This is from a piece on a Psychology Today blog, that references my last book Baby Love about mothers who envy their daughters. It’s good to see professionals who understand the subtext of complex relationships. Half a century after Deutsche, … Read More

ADHD, The Check Out Line, and Me

By Rebecca Walker December 9, 2008

There is a lot to talk about, like: What a great job Obama is doing (and how saddened I am by how many are so critical so soon), the auto industry bailout and why it’s not "cost-effective" for the big … Read More

The Power of Power

By Rebecca Walker December 1, 2008

To continue our discussion of different kinds of power, I am thrilled Obama has brought Samantha Power, who was forced to resign from Team Obama during the campaign for calling Hillary Clinton "a monster," back on board as part of … Read More

The Michelle Obama Files

By Rebecca Walker November 28, 2008

Yesterday afternoon, in tandem with my original essay on Michelle Obama below, I joined a group of exceptional women including Anna Perez, the former Press Secretary for Barbara Bush, Leslie Morgan Steiner, the editor of the best-selling anthology Mommy Wars, … Read More

Michelle Obama and the End of Feminism As We Know It

By Rebecca Walker November 20, 2008

There were several unforgettable moments in the Obama campaign—Barack’s impassioned speech about race, the DNC finale at Invesco, Madelyn Dunham’s death just before her grandson became president-elect—but none meant more to me than a two-minute bit of tape, a simple … Read More