A Meeting of Walkers: Rebecca and Kara

The Root's Rebecca Walker hangs out with renowned artist Kara Walker in Turin, Italy, and on Facebook, where they talk about everything from salty dark chocolate to their kids to why Kara's no apologist for anti-black racism.

The Italian Job

by Rebecca Walker | The Root

Kara Walker is tall, fashionable and reserved when I meet her in the lobby of the chic Residence Du Parc, a brutalist landmark of poured concrete adorned with iconic examples of modernist and postmodern art. Outside huge windows, Turin is celebrating itself: Italian flags drip from every window, flutter along every boulevard.

Kara wears flat leather oxfords, tights and a paper-thin leather jacket. She eyes me somewhat warily as I extend my arms for an embrace and launch into small talk, which I normally detest. Luckily, my bags have been lost and I indulged in a truly remarkable spa treatment the night before, so I have plenty to talk about.

Kara says little. She's been working on the installation of her show we're both here in Italy to support. The necessary projectors have not arrived. The show is to open in five days, and today we have to teach a class to art students. I sense she'd like to get back to the gallery, and the class is a distraction. She twirls her hair as we wait for the taxi.

At the class, the students are on fire. They've studied our work and want to know about memory and myth, the creative process and its demands. Kara and I sit behind a paint-splattered table and do our best. I'm jet-lagged but exuberant, thanks to a piping-hot cappuccino; Kara is laconic and soft-spoken. But then I see it -- a gentle smile, then a big laugh followed by a series of confident assessments of student work.

As the day wears on, we find a groove. We tag-team it, develop a rapport, give everything we can in the time allotted. Driving back to the Du Parc to recover and prepare for dinner, we talk about our kids. Hers is starting high school, into fashion, gorgeous. Mine is 6, getting ready for soccer camp, and I miss him with an ache I can't begin to put into words.

The next five days are a whirlwind of activity. We teach the students, I present my memoir Baby Love at Il Circolo dei Lettori on the same night that Jonathan Franzen reads from Freedom. I introduce Kara's show, A Negress of Noteworthy Talent, to a full gallery, and Melissa Harris-Perry and Jennifer Richeson follow up with talks about the black body and the neurological workings of prejudice. The press descends and recommends.

Later, I steal away to the Egyptian Museum. We dine at the home of Olga Gambari, the show's remarkable curator, and shop the Ballon, one of Europe's largest open-air markets, where I snag a fabulous Prada-esque red coat for five euros and a dress made of African wax cloth for 10, while Kara snaps pics of me on her iPhone.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

'Left of Black': Episode #24 featuring Pierre & Jamyla Bennu and Rebecca Walker

Left of Black Episode # 24

w/Pierre & Jamyla Bennu & Rebecca Walker

March 7, 2011

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Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by filmmaker and conceptual artist Pierre Bennu and his partner Jamyla Bennu. Latter writer Rebecca Walker joins Neal, also via Skype, from her home in Hawaii.

→Pierre Bennu is a filmmaker and conceptual artist. Among his work is the full length film Red Bone Guerillas (2003) and film shorts including “Sun Moon Child” (2007) and the “Black Moses Barbie” (2011) series. Bennu is also the author of BS or Fertilizer. Bennu runs the small business, Oyin Handmade, making natural skin and hair care products and the production company ExittheApple.com with his wife and partner Jamyla Bennu.

→Rebecca Walker is an award-winning speaker, teacher, and bestselling author. She presents ideas about race, class, culture, gender, and the evolution of the human family that challenge ideological rigidity and encourage fresh approaches to enduring conflicts. Time Magazine named her one of the fifty most influential leaders of her generation. Walker is the author of two memoirs, Black White and Jewish: Autobiography of the Shifting Self (2002) and Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After A Lifetime of Ambivalence (2008).


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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Carry on Tradition--Celebrating the Legacy of Hip-Hop Feminism

On the cusp of the millennium, several books by young Black women ushered in a fresh perspective on Black womanhood.

Carry On Tradition
by Britni Danielle

On the cusp of the millennium, several books by young Black women ushered in a fresh perspective on Black womanhood. Writers like Joan Morgan, Lisa Jones, Dream Hampton, Tricia Rose, Rebecca Walker, and others, represented a new brand of post-civil rights, hip hop-influenced feminism that spoke to young women in ways in which older Black and White female writers could not. The f-word was no longer a stance reserved for White women who wanted to get even with men. It was no longer the struggle in which our foremothers fought for inclusion. This new brand of feminism was relatable. It understood that we liked to look cute, have fun, discuss serious issues, and loved our brothas, despite their inherent privilege.

I remember reading When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost when it debuted and thinking that Joan Morgan was speaking FOR me. I loved hip hop, hard. It was my first crush, the soundtrack to my youth, it inspired my passion for writing, but I always felt some kind of way about the ease in which women were relegated to the sidelines. With the exception of a few dope women (Latifah, MC Lyte, Salt-n-Pepa, Lauryn), women were almost always seen as sidepieces and groupies.

But I kept listening. Even though I danced to its beats, would argue about who was the best emcee, and would defend hip hop like it was my big brother, I always felt uneasy about its willingness to label other women (because clearly, they couldn’t be talking about ME, right?) bitches and hoes. Joan Morgan’s in-your-face exploration of women maturing in the age of hip hop articulated my own contradictory feelings about a culture I loved, but didn’t always love me.

This new brand of feminism understood that the struggle of women wasn’t about hating men. It wasn’t about writing them off and branding them as enemies. Our feminism—as beneficiaries of many movements of equality—was about claiming our voice, articulating our worth, and fighting our own, modern, battles.

Read the Full Essay @ Clutch Magazine

The Assassination of Erykah Badu

It's not just a video. It's art.

The Assassination of Erykah Badu
by Rebecca Walker

The frenzy over the latest Erykah Badu video, "Window Seat," has been fascinating to watch--a cultural phenom in itself. Folks in the blogosphere have been grasping for answers, for the magic decoder to come down from on high. What on earth is Erykah trying to say? Is it a publicity stunt? Is being shot on the grassy knoll another portrait of a tragic artist? Has the black, female president of the United States of Amerykah just been assassinated? Or, if she staged the "shoot" herself, is it a suicide?

I had some of the same questions, but was more struck by the prevailing need to pin down an ultimate truth, or at least a definitive opinion. It made me think about great artists--not de facto including Erykah in this category--and how they often have their own, sometimes incomprehensible, language. Davinci's Mona Lisa is still indecipherable, for example, and if it were not, its power would be lost. Modern art itself would be dead, or at least returned to its vainglorious Medici roots.

Because doesn't art too easily understood cease to be art? It becomes a simple product for easy consumption, and robs the viewer of the right to their own experience, all the while upholding values possibly not even in their own best interest. In that other world--the world, perhaps, of entertainment--each painting, video, and piece of music, is a piece of propaganda for those who control its production; an opportunist vehicle to affirm someone else's way of looking at the world.

Like Roy DeCarava and Charlie Mingus, Eva Hesse and Ana Mendieta, Erykah Badu, aka @fatbellybella, strikes me as someone who lives in a sealed world of her own linguistic creation. She absorbs the bits that speak to her and runs it through the sieve of her own sensibility--an extremely specific (and ultimately proprietary) way of seeing. As Erykah's tattoo acknowledges, her alchemical interface with the world is ever changing, but her commitment to her inner truth, accessibility be damned, is where her process of transforming the ordinary into the transcendent begins.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root