Black Women

As a culture critic, Lemieux has spent years pushing back against the stereotypes and stigma that follow single mothers. Her new book blends her own memoir with the stories of 21 other Black women.

DaCosta's latest film, Hedda, is personal, a project she wrote years ago and couldn't shake. In it, she reimagines Henrik Ibsen's 1891 play, Hedda Gabler, recasting the main character as a queer, mixed-race Black woman and transporting the action to a 1950s English manor.

Tracee Ellis Ross co-stars in the Oscar-nominated movie American Fiction. For eight seasons, she starred in the ABC comedy series Black-ish. We talk about her new projects, her superstar mother, Diana Ross, and forging her own path outside of her mother's success. We also talk about how she's come to embrace, at 51, never having children or being married.

Thede's HBO series, A Black Lady Sketch Show, is the first sketch comedy show solely written, directed and starring Black women. "It is a nonstop job," she says of the various hats she wears.

South African writer Diana Russell. Russell has written several books on subjects such as rape and sexual abuse against women. Russell's new book, "Lives of Courage," profiles 24 women in South Africa who have fought against apartheid. The book also examines sex issues in South Africa. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)