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Backtalker
  • Published: 5 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781802060744
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
Categories:

Backtalker

A Memoir

Formats & editions
Hardback
11 Aug 2026
EBook
5 May 2026
Audiobook
5 May 2026
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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.
  • Published: 5 May 2026
  • ISBN: 9781802060744
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336
Categories:

About the author

Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw

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!
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Praise for Backtalker

A beautifully written, compelling and insightful memoir from the extraordinary intellectual, activist and scholar who has shaped critical discourse in America. A moving and powerful read

Bryan Stevenson

A searing, defiant and deeply inspiring memoir for our times from one of America's greatest architects of justice

V (formerly Eve Ensler)

Her ideas have shaped generations of thinkers and activists globally. Now, with Backtalker, we come to understand the people and contexts that have given shape to Kimberlé Crenshaw, her values and her sensibilities. This in-depth self-portrait reveals a woman of great depth, courage, and conviction—a truth teller and justice seeker. It is a tale as unique and compelling as its author, a much needed story for our times and beyond

Farah Jasmine Griffin

Her name and her work have become an introductory point for feminists of all stripes

New Statesman

It is rare that creators of movements that shake the world use the memoir form to honestly and precisely explore how their will to change was created. Kimberlé Crenshaw has made a fleshy piece of theory, a foundational book for this nation, a moving memoir that will continue to build on the monumental work Crenshaw has already done. We will thankfully be feeling the work of this book for generations

Kiese Laymon

Kimberlé Crenshaw is a national treasure

Kerry Washington

Kimberlé Crenshaw is one of America’s most original legal thinkers, a pioneering theorist whose scholarship has transformed the way we think about race, gender, and the law. Now in Backtalker, her powerful new memoir, she reminds us of the greatest teacher of all: experience. Here is a compelling account of the making not only of a visionary mind on the front lines of change, but of the ‘we’ that binds us to one another in families, communities, and in the nation as a whole

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

My feminist hero is Dr Kimberlé Crenshaw … We live in turbulent times, and I think it’s in part thanks to Dr Crenshaw that more marginalised voices are now speaking up

Munroe Bergdorf

The woman who revolutionised feminism

Guardian