Michele Wallace

To Hell and Back: On The Road with Black Feminism in the 60s & 70s

Michele Wallace Book: Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, the book, Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, went on to include a separate essay on  “Black Macho,” a term that encapsulated the anti-intellectual impulse within Black Power rhetoric. Back in 1979, you probably would have been stunned by this text, and you wouldn’t have been the only one. Wallace’s book led to debate about the role of Black Macho, the relationships between African American men and women and the place African American women held in the fight against racism and sexism.

"More to the point perhaps, I had no inkling at 18 that I would still be explaining 26 years later why or how I, as a black woman, became a feminist. The necessity of doing so is all the more aggravating as I have come to realize in the past decade that my feminist ethics and my racial pride are no more than the tip of the iceberg so far as my identity goes."

In a 2009 post on Wallace’s blog, she explained the circumstances behind the publishing of the excerpt and book. 

Ms. Blog: Black History Month: The Myth of the Black Superwoman, Revisited

Criticism of the book came from all fronts, as Calvin Hernton writes in “The Sexual Mountain and Black Women Writers” in the Black American Literature Forum:

Wallace was right–the book has survived the criticism and remains a landmark black feminist text. Her discussion of the Superwoman has developed into an ongoing critique of the “Strong Black Woman” (SBW) archetype. During this month devoted to Black history, this text deserves rereading.