Adrienne Rich was an award-winning poet, influential essayist, radical feminist, and the most important intellectual voice of her generation. Essays Essentials of Her brings together her most famous essays of hers in a single volume, showcasing the enduring brilliance of her speech, her prophetic vision, and her revolutionary views on social justice. Her selection spans from the 1960s to 2008 and contains many of her early essays collected in "On Lies, Secrets and Silences", along with excerpts from her ambitious and innovative "We are born as a woman." Motherhood as an experience and as an institution ». As the New York Times wrote, "Rich brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse," as evidenced, for example, in his 1980 essay, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence." Also among these insightful and farsighted works are hers "Notes for a Politics of Location", excerpts from "What We Found There. Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, "" Why I Rejected the National Medal of Arts, "" Poetry and the Forgotten Future, "and other writings that profoundly shaped Second Wave feminism, each balanced by the distinctive blend of Rich's research, theory and self-reflection.