ABSTRACT
The tradition of black feminist essay writing resonates strongly with my own history. I was a teenage girl in the 1960s when writers like Frances Beale used essays to articulate an emergent black feminist perspective on womanhood. I was a young military woman in the 1970s when activists like Angela Davis used essays to push for recognition of our full enfranchisement in the nation's institutions and social movements. I was a non-traditional college student and the mother of two young sons in the 1980s when advocates like Audre Lorde used essays to assert the integration of domestic experiences and public roles; and I emerged as a college professor in the 1990s when scholars like bell hooks used essays to redefine what it can mean for African American women to be academic intellectuals. Essays from these decades are personally significant because they tell the story of my life as an African American woman.
