After decades of debate, misunderstanding, and controversy, seminal LA-based performance artist and long-time friend and collaborator Barbara T. Smith sets the record straight in her new book called “What You Need to Know”. Published in 2020 and created with the help of EZTV’s Kate Johnson (among the very last projects she completed before her passing), the book gives Smith’s essential contextualization and insights into what is among her most acknowledged pieces “Feed Me” (1973). The book, published in very limited editions and including several essays by noted scholars, should begin a new and critically important dialogue concerning self-empowerment, feminist art, and the need for greater awareness of the motivations and concerns of arts practitioners, especially those exploring outside the conventional and commonplace.