One of most influential thinkers today offers a deeply engaging story of justice and power in America

When Kimberlé Crenshaw was five years old in Ohio during the civil rights era, she was the only girl denied a lead role in her nursery play. Puzzled by her teacher's behaviour, she spoke up - and never stopped. That instinct to question power, to challenge what others accepted as fair, would shape not only her own life but the way we now understand race and gender.

In Backtalker, Crenshaw traces her journey from a spirited girl in Canton, Ohio to one of the most influential legal thinkers today. Through childhood lessons and painful reckonings - a boyfriend’s violence in college, a back door at Harvard Law, the silencing of women in the civil rights movement - Crenshaw learned to see the patterns others missed, refusing to stay behind the lines the world drew for her.

Out of those experiences came two ideas that changed everything: intersectionality, the recognition that race, gender, and class overlap to create unique forms of discrimination; and critical race theory, the argument that racism is structural. Crenshaw’s voice has since echoed through some of the most charged moments in recent history - from Anita Hill’s testimony to the rise of Black Lives Matter - insisting that true justice means seeing the whole picture.

Backtalker is both a memoir of awakening and the origin story of a transformative mind. Crenshaw’s story is ultimately about fairness and power - and the enduring battle for America’s soul.

Kimberlé Crenshaw is a pioneering scholar and writer on civil rights, Black feminist legal theory, and race, racism and the law. She was a founder and has been a leader in the intellectual movement called Critical Race Theory, and is also known for introducing and developing the concept of intersectionality. She is a Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Isidor and Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, and is the co-founder and Executive Director of the African American Policy Forum. Crenshaw writes regularly for The New Republic, The Nation, and Ms., has appeared as a commentator on media outlets including MSNBC and NPR, and hosts the podcast Intersectionality Matters!