Michele Wallace

Michele Wallace is a feminist and antiracist cultural studies scholar. She was one of the founders of the National Black Feminist Organization, and became known as a writer at The Village Voice. She is best known for her 1979 book, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (which is not about the comics heroine, but about Wallace's experiences in the civil rights movement).

Wallace is also daughter of artist Faith Ringgold.

Quotes

Some unimaginative types, most persistently in the provinces, continue to believe that a black woman must be brainwashed by white culture in order to voluntarily call herself a feminist. In fact, it has never been easier for me to be a black feminist than it is right now. Perhaps because I haven't been anything else for so many years, I find it difficult to imagine how women who are not feminists stand themselves. Essentially, I've given up on most other kinds of speculative political thought or activism anyway so why not go completely futuristic and visionary? You might say that my preferred political perspective has taken on an almost science fiction-type improbability.

Works

• Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1979)
• Black Popular Culture
• "Modernism, Postmodernism and the Problem of the Visual in Afro-American Culture"
• "To Hell and Back: On the Road with Black Feminism in the 60s & 70s" (1997; see Feminist Memoir Project ed. Anne snitow & Rachel Du Plessis (1998))

• Interviewed in "Black Is, Black Ain't" (Marlon Riggs)

Notes

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