CELEBRATED AUTHOR AND ACTIVIST REBECCA WALKER TO
DELIVER BLACK HISTORY MONTH KEYNOTE ADDRESS

Celebrated author and activist Rebecca Walker will deliver the keynote address for Bryn Mawr's Black History Month celebration on Thursday, Feb.16. The talk, titled "Continuing the Legacy: Feminists of Color in the New Millennium," will be presented in Thomas Great Hall from 7:30 to 9 p.m.; a reception and book-signing will follow in the Quita Woodward Room. The event is free and open to the public.

Hailed by Time magazine as one of the leaders of her generation, Walker began writing for Ms. magazine as an undergraduate and is now a contributing editor of the publication. She is the author of Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, a memoir of her upbringing as the daughter of the famous African-American writer Alice Walker and Jewish civil-rights lawyer Mel Leventhal and her struggle to negotiate the cultural boundaries imposed by a race-obsessed society. She has edited the anthologies To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism and What Makes a Man: Twenty-two Writers Imagine the Future. Her writings on topics including race, feminism, bisexuality, hip-hop and masculinity have been published in Harper's, Salon.com, Interview, Vibe, Essence, SPIN, Glamour and Buddhadharma, among others.

In 1997 Walker co-founded the Third Wave Foundation, a national philanthropic organization that focuses its efforts on women aged 15-30. According to its mission statement, "Third Wave Foundation's feminism is explicitly connected to issues of race, class, gender identity, heterosexism and other justice movements." Walker has said that the foundation was conceived as a way to address the alienation many young women felt toward the concept of feminism as they understood it and to give them "an opportunity to redefine feminism."

"Third Wave was also a response to critiques of the Second Wave," Walker said in an interview. "It was important to us (the founders) that Third Wave be, at its very core, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-issue, pan-sexual-orientation, with people and issues from all socio-economic backgrounds represented."

Following the lecture, light refreshments will be served in the Quita Woodward Room. Copies of Black, White and Jewish and To Be Real will be available for purchase at the event through the Bryn Mawr bookshop.

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