BARBARA SMITH
A legendary scholar/activist, Barbara Smith was among the first to identify a black women´s literary tradition in the 1970s and virtually invented the discipline of black women´s studies and feminism in the U.S. Her life´s work focuses on the intersections of race, class, sexuality and gender, and her dozens of honors and awards-including a Nobel Peace Prize nomination in 2005-attest to the impact her writing, research and activism have had on the national dialogue around these issues. “There were real gaps in what was considered to be meaningful culture and serious politics, and that´s what I decided to address,” she says. Smith has published several groundbreaking collections exploring women´s activism against racial, sexual and political oppression, most recently Ain´t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith, edited by Smith, Alethia Jones and Virginia Eubanks last November. Despite the LGBT community´s many gains over the last decade, though, Smith says we shouldn´t rest. “We still have a lot of work to do, particularly when we look at how race, class, and gender expression undermine access and opportunity for many members of the LGBT community. We need to have an intersectional perspective and to work for justice on all fronts if we want to achieve real liberation.” Spoken like a true revolutionary. -KL
What Do You Think?