Sarah Palin’s emergence on the scene has Americans regressing to that silly and inherently sexist question, “Can women do it all — have both career and family?”  

So naturally, we’re also back to (de)constructing and (re)defining “feminism.” Suheir Hammad, Palestinian-American poet, author, and political activist was recently featured with feminist icon Gloria Steinem in New York Magazine’s 40th Anniversary Issue. Here’s what Hammad had to say about deeming oneself a feminist:

“I think of feminism as a socially just and imaginative world. You know, in my twenties I was taught that feminism meant we had to be supersmart, in the realm of intellectualism—to make rational, detached, unemotional pleas. But now I think what Gloria (Steinem) and all our sisters have given us is imagination. It’s a question of: Can I imagine that world?”

In Conversation: Gloria Steinhem and Suheir Hammad, New York Magazine, September 28, 2008 

Photo: Dan Winters, New York Magazine

In his review of The Slaves War, book forum’s Lawrence Hill questions:

“Is it a problem that many of the most famous and enduring fictional accounts of African Americans have been penned by whites?…[T]he average elementary or high school student in the United States or Canada who wants—or is told—to learn something about black culture and history is more likely to begin and end his or her reading with Twain and Lee than with any of these African-American writers.

One way to interrupt this trend—whether unconscious or deliberate—of ignoring African-American writers is to incorporate memoirs into the body of Civil War literature. In its transparency and vitality, the African-American memoir has the power to reach out and grab readers and hold them chapter after chapter. A great slave narrative, for example, offers the drama of fiction and the cutting edge of historical fact.”

Excerpted from: Voices Carry, bookforum.com, June/July/August 2008 Issue