Kimberlé W. Crenshaw — Backtalker: An American Memoir

Roosevelt House, together with the Roosevelt House Public Policy Program and Hunter College Department of Women and Gender Studies, are pleased to present pioneering scholar and writer, and one of the country’s most influential public intellectuals, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, on her new book, Backtalker: An American Memoir. The author is in conversation with Tony Award-winning playwright, author, and performer, V (formerly Eve Ensler). Welcoming remarks by Roosevelt House Public Policy Program Director Joe Lowndes. Backtalker delivers the powerful and intimate story of how a little girl from Canton, Ohio, came up with a new way to look at the world, and reshaped the way Americans think about race and gender. The architect of the concepts of “intersectionality” and “Critical Race Theory,” Crenshaw’s work is widely considered to have permanently changed the national and global debate on equality. “Searing, defiant and deeply inspiring,” according to V, Crenshaw’s memoir traces the way her lived experience made her see what others didn’t. The daughter of a strong-minded teacher and a pathbreaking public servant, and the sister of a protective, yet bullying older brother, Crenshaw’s book evokes the most pivotal moments of her life with a novelist’s flair and specificity. As the book so powerfully shows, these circumstances led Crenshaw to begin to “talk back,” and that backtalking has continued to this day. As a result, Crenshaw and her work have become a force to be reckoned with across the country—at schools, in the workplace, at dinner tables, and, of course, in our public square. Kimberlé W. Crenshaw is a pioneering scholar of civil rights and Black feminist legal theory, and the Co-Founder and Executive Director of both the African American Policy Forum and Columbia Law School’s Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. She is also the Promise Institute Professor at UCLA Law School and the Isidor and the Seville Sulzbacher Professor at Columbia Law School. Popularly known for her development of “intersectionality,” “Critical Race Theory,” and the #SayHerName Campaign, she is the host of the podcast Intersectionality Matters! Her writing has appeared in The New Republic, The Nation, and Ms., and her commentary has been featured on media outlets including MSNBC and NPR. V (formerly Eve Ensler) is an internationally acclaimed Tony and Obie Award-winning, Olivier-nominated playwright, bestselling author, performer, and activist. Her plays include global phenomenon, The Vagina Monologues, published in 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries; The Good Body (Broadway); In the Body of the World (Off-Broadway); Emotional Creature (Off-Broadway), and Dear Everything (National Tour/BAM). She is the author of Reckoning, The Apology, and I am an Emotional Creature. Founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising, she’s been named to Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.” Her writing regularly appears in The Guardian. Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, May 11, 2026.