Backtalker : An American Memoir

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, the legal scholar who established the legal framework of critical race theory and the concept of intersectionality, has never been afraid to speak truth to power. Her brilliant, accessible Backtalker: An American Memoir reveals that her boldness began at home. 

Positioning herself as the latest in a long line of backtalkers, Crenshaw describes growing up in 1960s Canton, Ohio, where she experiences prejudice at a young age and watches her parents, both teachers, resist with pride. It is in small, specific moments in childhood—being denied the starring role in a school performance; having her melodica snatched out of her hand by an entitled white parent—that Crenshaw’s consciousness about race is raised and her parents school her in the “complex politics of Blackness and skin color.” Yet gender is not addressed in the same way: Her brother’s sexual escapades are considered natural, while hers are closely monitored. She learns that her mother wanted to be a medical doctor but was pushed toward the field of education (seen as more appropriate for a would-be mother) by her own father, who himself was a doctor. These stories prepare the reader for Crenshaw’s insight that an intersectional lens, one that views how various aspects of identity interact to shape an individual’s experiences, is required to understand the injustices experienced by Black women. All the while, Crenshaw’s panache is evident in her storytelling, as is her willingness to lay her heart bare by sharing the tragedies that shaped her home life. 

As Crenshaw gains academic steam, rocketing from Cornell to Harvard to the University of Wisconsin and ultimately accepting a faculty role at UCLA, her focus shifts from the personal events that shaped her life and lens to the cultural events that shaped her public intellectualism and advocacy, including the Supreme Court confirmation of Clarence Thomas and the O.J. Simpson trial. To read Crenshaw’s take on these events 30 years later feels like sitting in a classroom with an excellent teacher: Her insights are pointed, detailed and forward-looking. Crenshaw ultimately contributes to discussions about advocacy at the highest levels, including in Obama’s White House, and the memoir concludes with the project #SayHerName, which drew attention to Black women who have been killed by law enforcement. 

In all, Backtalker delivers on its promise, showcasing how Crenshaw’s unique human story prepared her to make a substantive contribution to legal thought and advocacy, and how a position of principled defiance has guided her every step of the way.