In a rich, diversified and international career, Carla Blank has been dramaturge, choreographer, stage director, writer, art and architecture critic, defender of women' s rights and of a multicultural America, and more. Fortunately, she has recorded much of her experience in essays now gathered in a single volume.

From her role as stage director in Ramallah through a searing critique of bigotry on Broadway, the storming of the old boys' citadel in architecture, a fine analysis of great women dancers and choreographers, such as the late great Suzushi Hanayagi, to the taking down of " mainstream" cultural historians on abstract art and postmodernism, Carla Blank brilliantly puts words to what the " ocean" of multicultural America feels.

In an exclusive interview with her partner Ishmael Reed, we learn how a curious young Jewish woman from Pittsburgh developed into a committed and eloquent public intellectual.