(born 1952) “Black feminist” intellectual, noted for such works as Ain’t I a Woman (1981), Talking Back (1981) and Outlaw Culture (1994), in which she synthesizes race, class and gender to examine African American culture, which she locates in a society shaped by “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” In her writings she outlines the limits of feminist solidarity divided along the lines of race and class, as well as the corresponding limits of racial and class solidarity. Born Gloria Watkins, she writes under the name of her great-grandmother; the use of lower-case letters in her name deflects attention from her identity onto her ideas.