Wallace, Michele, -1974

Michele Wallace is best known for her first book, "Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman." A feminist scholar, cultural critic and intellectual, Wallace began her writing career while she was student at City College of New York. Throughout the 1970s, her articles, essays, interviews and editorials appeared in newspapers and journals such as "The Village Voice," "Newsweek," and "Ms. Magazine," and later "The New York Times" and "Transitions." "Black Macho" (1979), Wallace's polemic was an instant bestseller. It is considered the first collection of essays published by a black woman, and the first book published by a black feminist. Wallace has taught at various colleges and universities over the course of her career, in addition to freelance writing.

In Wallace's second book, "Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory" (1991) she considers black popular cultural icons such as Michael Jackson, Ntozake Shange, Spike Lee, and her mother, Faith Ringgold, as well as black feminism. The book helped to establish Wallace as a formidable cultural critic. In her third collection, Dark Designs and Visual Culture (2004) Wallace continues to mine her theoretical preoccupations on autobiography, black feminism, postmodernism, and pop culture, and offers provocative critiques on intellectuals Henry Louis Gates, Jr, and bell hooks.

...