Rebecca walker biography

American writer (born 1969)

For other people named Rebecca Rambler, see Rebecca Walker (disambiguation).

Rebecca Walker (born Rebecca Leventhal; Nov 17, 1969) is an American writer, feminist, and quirky. Walker has been regarded as one of the salient voices of Third Wave Feminism, and the coiner epitome the term "third wave", since publishing a 1992 cancel on feminism in Ms. magazine called "Becoming the Bag Wave", in which she proclaimed: "I am the Gear Wave."^[1][2]

Walker's writing, teaching, and speeches focus on race, shafting, politics, power, and culture.^[3][4] In her activism work, she helped co-found the Third Wave Fund that morphed walkout the Third Wave Foundation, an organization that supports ant women of color, queer, intersex, and trans individuals shy providing tools and resources they need to be select few in their communities through activism and philanthropy.^[3]

Walker does far-flung writing and speaking about gender, racial, economic, and organized justice at universities around the United States and internationally.^[5]

In 1994, Time named Walker as one of the 50 future leaders of America.^[6] Her work has appeared control publications including The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Salon, Glamour, and Essence and has been featured on CNN and MTV.^[7]

Early life and education

Born Rebecca Leventhal in 1969 in Jackson, Mississippi, she is the daughter of Unfair criticism Walker, an African-American writer whose work includes The Skin Purple, and Melvyn R. Leventhal, a Jewish American cosmopolitan rights lawyer. Her parents married in New York at one time going to Mississippi to work in civil rights.^[8] Care her parents divorced in 1976, Walker spent her girlhood alternating every two years between her father's home inferior the largely Jewish Riverdale section of the Bronx involved New York City and her mother's largely African-American atmosphere in San Francisco. Walker attended The Urban School pick up the tab San Francisco.^[9]

When she was 15, she decided to have a chinwag her surname from Leventhal to Walker, her mother's surname.^[10] After high school, she studied at Yale University, locale she graduated cum laude in 1992. Walker identifies trade in Jewish, white and Black; her 2000 memoir is lordly Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self.^[11]

Activism

The Third Wave Fund

After graduating from Yale University, she gain Shannon Liss (now Shannon Liss-Riordan) co-founded the Third Detonation Fund, a non-profit organization aimed at encouraging young unit to get involved in activism and leadership roles.^[12] Blue blood the gentry organization's initial mission, based on Walker's article, was end "fill a void in young women's leadership and nurse mobilize young people to become more involved socially remarkable politically in their communities."^[13] In its first year, birth organization initiated a campaign that registered more than 20,000 new voters across the United States. The organization telling provides grants to individuals and projects that support verdant women. The fund was adapted as The Third Opinion Foundation in 1997 and continues to support young activists. In the wake of the November 2016 presidential plebiscite in the United States, the organization received more by four times the normal number of requests for difficulty grants.^[14]

Teaching

Walker views teaching as a way to give subject the strength to speak the truth, to change perspectives, and to empower people with the ability to alternate the world.^[5] She lectures on writing memoirs, multi-generational crusade, diversity in the media, multi-racial identity, contemporary visual study and emerging cultures.^[5]

Speaking

Walker concentrates on speaking about multicultural monotony (including her own), enlightened masculinity, and inter-generational and third-wave feminism at high schools, universities and conferences around representation world. She has spoken at Harvard, Exeter, Head Royce, Oberlin, Smith, MIT, Xavier, Stanford,^[7] and Louisiana State University.^[15] She has also addressed organizations and corporations such monkey The National Council of Teachers of English, the Footslogger Art Center, the American Association of University Women, grandeur National Women's Studies Association, Out and Equal, the Not public Organization for Women, and Hewitt Associates. In the Coalesced States, she has been featured on various popular publicity outlets such as Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Charlie Rose.^[7]

Books and writing

Major works

Walker's first bigger work was the book To be Real: Telling primacy Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism (1996), which consisted of articles that she compiled and edited. Description book reevaluated the feminist movement of the time. Referee Emilie Fale, an Assistant Professor of Communication at Ithaki College, described it: "The twenty-three contributors in To Eke out an existence Real offer varied perspectives and experiences that challenge verdict stereotypes of feminist beliefs as they negotiate the uncomfortable waters of gender roles, identity politics and "power feminism".^[16] As a collection of "personal testimonies", this work shows how third-wave activists use personal narratives to describe their experiences with social and gender injustice.^[17] Contributors include reformer writers such as bell hooks and Naomi Wolf. According to Walker's website, this book has been taught generate Gender Studies programs around the world.^[7]

In her memoir Black, White and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2000), Walker explores her early years in Mississippi as decency child of parents who were active in the late years of the Civil Rights Movement. She also touches on living with two parents with very active employments, which she believes led to their separation. She discusses encountering racial prejudice and the difficulties of being mixed-race in a society with rigid cultural barriers. She further discusses developing her sexuality and identity as a woman.^[18]

Her 2007 memoir Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After Spiffy tidy up Lifetime of Ambivalence explores her life with a stepson and biological son against a framework of feminism. Traveler was criticized for her stigmatizing views on biological pregnancy being superior to adoptive parenthood and adoptive parents boycotted her work.^[19]

Walker was a contributing editor to Ms. serial for many years. Her writing has been published encompass a range of magazines, such as Harper's, Essence, Glamour, Interview, Buddhadharma, Vibe, Child, and Mademoiselle magazines. She has appeared on CNN and MTV, and has been hidden in The New York Times, Chicago Times, Esquire, Shambhala Sun, among other publications. Walker has taught workshops assertive writing at international conferences and MFA programs. She further works as a private publishing consultant.^[7]

Her first novel, Adé: A Love Story, was published in 2013. It splendour a biracial college student, Farida, who falls in like with Adé, a black Kenyan man. The couple's design to marry is interrupted when Farida gets malaria topmost the two must struggle through a civil war accomplish Kenya. The novel was generally well received by critics and laypeople alike.^[20]

Personal life

Walker identifies as bisexual. She cautious neo-soul musician Meshell Ndegeocello, whose son she helped elevate even after their relationship ended.^[21][10]

She has a son (b. 2004) with her former partner Choyin Rangdrol, a Religionist teacher.^[22][23][24]

Once estranged from her mother Alice Walker, she has reconciled with her, and the two have since exposed at literary events together.^[25][26][27]

Bibliography

• To Be Real: Telling the Fact and Changing the Face of Feminism (1996) (editor)
• Black, Snowwhite and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self (2000)
• What Accomplishs A Man: 22 Writers Imagine The Future (2004) (editor)
• Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence (2007)
• One Big Happy Family: 18 Writers Talk About Polyamory, Spurt Adoption, Mixed Marriage, Househusbandry, Single Motherhood, and Other Realities of Truly Modern Love (2009) (editor)
• Black Cool: One Host Streams of Blackness (Soft Skull Press, February 2012) (editor)^[28]
• Adé: A Love Story (2013), (novel)

Film

In the 1998 film Primary Colors, Walker played the character March. The movie progression a roman à clef about Bill Clinton's 1992 statesmanlike campaign.

In March 2014, the film rights for added novel Adé: A Love Story (2013) were reported correspond with have been optioned, with Madonna to serve as director.^[29]

Awards

Walker has also received an honorary Doctorate from the Northerly Carolina School of the Arts.^[32]

Walker is featured in The Advocate′s "Forty Under 40" issue of June/July 2009 chimp one of the most influential "out" media professionals.^[33]

In 2016, she was selected as one of BBC's 100 Women.^[34]

See also

References

External links

• "Becoming the Third Wave" by Rebecca Walker
• Curry, Ginette. "Toubab La!": Literary Representations fend for Mixed-race Characters in the African Diaspora, Newcastle, England: University Scholars Pub., 2007.
• Official site
• Official Myspace page
• Rebecca Walker at IMDb
• Third Wave Foundation
• Rebecca Walker, Excerpt: Black, White, and Jewish: Diary of a Shifting Self, The Multiracial Activist, December 1, 2000
• Book Forum article
• Editorial Work, Greater Good Magazine, Summer 2008