Rebecca Walker

Rebecca Walker is an eloquent, wise-beyond-her-years speaker. A recipient of the Women Who Could Be President Award from the League of Women Voters, she is an expert on intergenerational feminism, multiculturalism, and transformational human awareness. Her first memoir, Black, White and Jewish, remains ... (more)a landmark in the field of bi-racial studies. Ostensibly about life during her parents' divorce (her mother is Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple), the book chronicles her search for identity as a bi-racial girl -- too black for some, not black enough for others -- and struck a chord with many readers. Her 2007 best-seller, Baby Love, is a touching, unsparing look at how she overcame a lifetime of ambivalence to finally embrace motherhood in her thirties -- a monumental decision in context: she is the product of the first generation of women to view children as optional. She is also the editor of the Third Wave primer To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. With a foreword by Gloria Steinem, her godmother, the book is taught in Gender Studies programs around the world. Walker also edited What Makes a Man, about the new age of enlightened masculinity. Walker will be speaking on "Hypen-Nation: The Role of Race in a Globalized Society."