the publication on black feminism, her upbringing in Harlem in the 1950s and '60s, and her position in the black middle-class educated elite. Wallace's articles in The Voice brought her prominence as a black feminist in New York. In 1975, she quit her job at Newsweek after receiving an advance for a book draft that would eventually become Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. She spent the next two years writing and editing this book. Low on money at the time, Wallace took on a job as an instructor in journalism at New York University in 1976, later becoming an assistant professor of English. Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman was published by Dial Press in 1979. Wallace was Essence magazine's Editor at Large in 1983. From 1995 to 1996, she was a columnist for The Village Voice. Wallace currently teaches at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). In addition to her B.A. in English and Creative Writing, she holds a M.A. in English from City College (1990) and a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University (1999). She has taught at numerous institutions, including Rutgers University and Cornell University. Her writing appears in many notable anthologies, among them All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave (1982, co-edited by Akasha Gloria Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott and Barbara Smith), Reading Black, Reading Feminist (1990, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.), and Daughters of Africa (1992, edited by Margaret Busby). Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman Overview Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman, published in 1979, criticizes sexism in the black community and black nationalism in the 1960s. The book grapples with twin stereotypes of the black man and woman—black macho, the hypermasculine and hypersexualized black man, and superwoman, the inordinately strong black woman unfazed by white racism. The book criticizes black men and the Civil Rights Movement for its injurious acceptance of white society's notion of manhood. This, according to Wallace, has resulted in a divide between black women and men. Combining personal anecdotes with social, cultural, and historical analysis, Wallace also reflects on her subject position as an educated middle-class black woman. A pre-publication excerpt of Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman appeared in the January 1979 issue of