It had the effect of a bomb when the Guardian published the interview of Alice Walker talking about her love affair with Tracy Chapman. However if everyone (=in the lesbian small world) knew it, it was the first time that one of them would talk publicly about it.
Extract of No Retreat (December 15, 2006) :
I tell her people are still fascinated by her love affair with the singer Tracy Chapman in the mid-1990s. Moments earlier she had said firmly but politely that she didn't want to answer any questions about her family life. (Her daughter Rebecca, from her marriage to Levanthal, published a frank memoir in 2000 in which she criticised the self-absorption of both parents after their divorce.) So I was surprised to see her face light up at the mention of Chapman. "Yeah I loved it too. Absolutely."
Why was it kept so quiet at the time? "It was quiet to you maybe but that's because you didn't live in our area," she answers with a throaty laugh. She has written about the relationship in her journals, which she plans to publish one day. So why did they decide against using their relationship to make a big social impact like other celebrity lesbian couples, such as Ellen DeGeneres and Anne Heche, have in the past? The idea seems to amuse her. "I would never do that. My life is not to be somebody else's impact - you know what I mean? And it was delicious and lovely and wonderful and I totally enjoyed it and I was completely in love with her but it was not anybody's business but ours."
