Zadie Smith is a British novelist, essayist, and short story writer best known for her novel, White Teeth. Smith was born in 1975 in London, England. Her mother, Yvonne Bailey had grown up in Jamaica and moved to England in 1969 and her father Harvey Smith was English. As a child, Smith enjoyed tap dancing …
Kathy Acker was an American experimental novelist, punk poet, playwright, essayist, postmodernist and sex-positive feminist writer. She is best known for her 1984 novel Blood and Guts in High School. Asker was born in New York City in 1947. Her father left the family before Acker was born, and her mother remarried quickly. Acker grew …
Pauli Murray was an American civil rights activist, women’s rights activist, lawyer and author. She was the first woman to be awarded a J.D.S degree from Yale and the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. She also co-founded NOW, the National Organization for Women. Murray was born in 1910 in Baltimore, …
Funmilayo Ransome Kuti was a Nigerian teacher, feminist and political leader who was the leading advocate of women’s rights in her country during the first half of the 20th century. Ransome-Kuti was born Frances Abigail Olufunmilayo Thomas in 1900 in Abeokuta, Egbaland (now Nigeria). She became the first female student at the Abeokuta Grammar School, …
Barbara Kruger is an American feminist conceptual artist who challenges cultural assumptions by manipulating images and text in her photographic compositions. She is best known for her print Untitled (Your body is a battleground) (1989) which uses her signature style of a black and white photograph with red and white text. The image was designed …
Ann Oakley is a British sociologist, feminist and writer who pioneered research into women’s lives, including the role of a housewife, childbirth and motherhood. She is currently a Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London where she founded the Social Science Research Unit and established the EPPI-Centre (Evidence for Policy and Practice Information …
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning Nigerian novelist, nonfiction writer and short story writer. She is best known for her novels, Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah and her inspirational 2012 TEDx talk entitled “We should all be feminists” which was adapted into a book-length essay in 2014. Adichie was born in …
Kimberlé Crenshaw is an American scholar in the field of critical race theory, and a professor at UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School. She is a leading authority in the areas of Civil Rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law and a co-founder and executive director of the African …
Judith Butler is an American philosopher and gender theorist. She is best known for her books Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Her work has influenced political philosophy, ethics and the fields of feminist, queer and literary theory. Butler was born in 1956 …
Amandla Stenberg is an actress best known for Catelya in Colombiana and Rue in The Hunger Games. She is an activist and in addition to advocating for No Kid Hungry, she has spoken out about a range of issues including the Black Lives Matter movement and the appropriation of black culture into the mainstream. She …