Mari Matsuda is a writer and law professor. Her books include Where is Your Body and Other Essays on Race, Gender, and the Law, Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech and the First Amendment,and We Won’t Go Back: Making the Case For Affirmative Action.
Professor Matsuda grew up in Los Angeles and Hawaii, and her writings reflect her experience in multicultural settings. Her many law review articles are among the most widely read and cited in the legal academy, and she is known both for the originality of her analysis and her unique narrative voice. She is an activist, as well as a scholar, a volunteer attorney in civil rights cases and a board member in public interest and social change organizations. Her parents, who took her to demonstrations before she could walk, initiated her into the civil rights movement, and she is a lifetime participant in non-violent protest in support of labor rights, peace and equality.
She has worked as a hotel maid, legal messenger, law clerk to a judge of the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals, labor lawyer, and as a professor at the University of Hawaii, at UCLA, and now at Georgetown Law Center.
