How Michele Wallace Sought Black Women’s Liberation Through Art

By Courtney Thorsson via https://lithub.com/

Courtney Thorsson on the Emergence of a Black Feminist Literary Culture in America

An extended community nurtured the achievements of The Sisterhood. Many other Black feminist groups and individual intellectuals in the 1970s and early 1980s shared The Sisterhood’s goals of publication and publicity for Black women writers, as well as the belief that political and social change could and should be made through culture. In this larger network of Black women literary activists, the group mattered to and benefited from the work of women who were not official members of The Sisterhood. Michele Wallace, Toni Cade Bambara, and Cheryll Y. Greene are especially important for understanding The Sisterhood’s impact. Wallace engaged, sharpened, and extended the group’s Black feminist ideas into literary and cultural criticism. Bambara extended their advocacy for Black women’s writing into the South and was an important friend and interlocutor, especially for Toni Morrison. Cheryll Y. Greene collaborated with Sisterhood members to get Black feminist thought into Black mainstream culture on the pages of Essence magazine.

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