Dark Designs and Visual Culture

Michele Wallace burst into public consciousness with the 1979 publication of Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, a pioneering critique of the misogyny of the Black Power movement and the effects of racism and sexism on black women. Since then, Wallace has produced an extraordinary body of journalism and criticism engaging with popular culture and gender and racial politics. This collection brings together more than fifty of the articles she has written over the past fifteen years. Included alongside many of her best-known pieces are previously unpublished essays as well as interviews conducted with Wallace about her work. Dark Designs and Visual Culture charts the development of a singular, pathbreaking black feminist consciousness.

Beginning with a new introduction in which Wallace reflects on her life and career, this volume includes other autobiographical essays; articles focused on popular culture, the arts, and literary theory; and explorations of issues in black visual culture. Wallace discusses growing up in Harlem; how she dealt with the media attention and criticism she received for Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, which was published when she was just twenty-seven years old; and her relationship with her family, especially her mother, the well-known artist Faith Ringgold. The many articles devoted to black visual culture range from the historical tragedy of the Hottentot Venus, an African woman displayed as a curiosity in nineteenth-century Europe, to films that sexualize the black body—such as Watermelon Woman, Gone with the Wind, and Paris Is Burning. Whether writing about the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas hearings, rap music, the Million Man March, Toshi Reagon, multiculturalism, Marlon Riggs, or a nativity play in Bedford Stuyvesant, Wallace is a bold, incisive critic. Dark Designs and Visual Culture brings the scope of her career and thought into sharp focus.

A collection of writings from the ‘90s by the popular Black feminist scholar and journalist on film, art, and politics.

Library Journal

A trenchant commentator on race, gender, media, and art (and daughter of artist Faith Ringgold, who figures strongly in her work), cultural critic Wallace was 26 when her book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman (1979) announced her distinctive feminist voice and bold, confrontational style. These qualities are much in evidence in her new work, which assesses racist/sexist elements in popular culture, claims space for black feminists, and examines blackness and the visual arts. Included are over 50 articles, addresses, and interviews, written between 1989 and 2003 and in some cases not previously published, that encompass autobiography, literary and cultural theory, and critiques of films, performances, and other cultural phenomena. Wallace reviles all that enables racism and misogyny and has harsh words for those who, in her view, limit or misrepresent black intellectual and cultural discourse. Provocative and thoughtful, this compilation is recommended for academic libraries that serve programs in women's studies, African American studies, or the study of media and culture.-Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington Libs., OH Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Michele Wallace is Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Cornell University. She is the author of Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory and Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. She has written for numerous popular and scholarly publications, including The Village Voice, The New York Times, Emerge, Aperture, Ms., October, and Renaissance Noire.