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Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press Feminist Series) Kindle Edition
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Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature.
“[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware.”—The New York Times
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published.
These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to “never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . ”
“[Lorde's] works will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware.”—The New York Times
In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope. This commemorative edition includes a new foreword by Lorde-scholar and poet Cheryl Clarke, who celebrates the ways in which Lorde's philosophies resonate more than twenty years after they were first published.
These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to “never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is . . . ”
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherCrossing Press
- Publication dateJan. 4 2012
- File size2862 KB
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Review
“An eye-opener”—Publishers Weekly
“[Sister Outsider is] another indication of the depth of analysis that black women writers are contributing to feminist thought.”—Barbara Christian, PhD, author of Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
“[Sister Outsider is] another indication of the depth of analysis that black women writers are contributing to feminist thought.”—Barbara Christian, PhD, author of Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving
Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance.
Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and thereby the right to dominance.
Heterosexism: The belief in the inherentsuperiority of one pat, tern of lovingand thereby its right to dominance.
Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one's own sexand therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.
THEABOVE FORMS of human blindness stem from the same root - an inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self, when there are shared goals.
To a large degree, at least verbally, the Black community has moved beyond the "two steps behind her man" concept of sexual relations sometimes mouthed as desirable during the sixties. This was a time when the myth of the Black matriarchy as a social disease was being presented by racist forces to redirect our attentions away from the real sources of Black oppression.
For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others - for their use and to our detriment. The development of self-defined Black women, ready to explore and pursue our power and interests within our communities, is a vital component in the war for Black liberation. The image of the Angolan woman with a baby on one arm and a gun in the other is neither romantic nor fanciful. When Black women in this country corne together to examine our sources of strength and support, and to recognize our common social, cultural, emotional, and political interests, it is a development which can only contribute to the power of the Black community as a whole. It can certainly never diminish it. For it is through the corning together of self-actualized individuals, female and male, that any real advances can be made. The old sexual power relationships based on a dominant/subordinate model between unequals have not served us as a people, nor as individuals.
Black women who define ourselves and our goals beyond the sphere of a sexual relationship can bring to any endeavor the realized focus of completed and therefore empowered individuals. Black women and Black men who recognize that the development of their particular strengths and interests does not diminish the other do not need to diffuse their energies fighting for control over each other. We can focus our attentions against the real economic, political, and social forces at the heart of this society which are ripping us and our children and our worlds apart.
Increasingly, despite opposition, Black women are corning together to explore and to alter those manifestations of our society which oppress us in different ways from those that oppress Black men. This is no threat to Black men. It is only seen as one by those Black men who choose to embody within themselves those same manifestations of female oppression. For instance, no Black man has ever been forced to bear a child he did not want or could not support. Enforced sterilization and unavailable abortions are tools of oppression against Black women, as is rape. Only to those Black men who are unclear about the pathways of their own definition can the self-actualization and self-protective bonding of Black women be seen as a threatening development.
Today, the red herring of lesbian...baiting is being used in the Black community to obscure the true face of racism/sexism. Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men. Too frequently, however, some Black men attempt to rule by fear those Black women who are more ally than enemy. These tactics are expressed as threats of emotional rejection: "Their poetry wasn't too bad but I couldn't take all those lezzies." The Black man say... ing this is code...warning every Black woman present interested in a relationship with a man - and most Black women are that (1) if she wishes to have her work considered by him she must eschew any other allegiance except to him and (2) any woman who wishes to retain his friendship and/or support had better not be "tainted" by woman-identified interests.
If such threats of labelling, vilification and/or emotional isolation are not enough to bring Black women docilely into camp as followers, or persuade us to avoid each other politically and emotionally, then the rule by terror can be expressed physically, as on the campus of a New York State college in the late 1970s, where Black women sought to come together around women's concerns. Phone calls threatening violence were made to those Black women who dared to explore the possibilities of a feminist connection with non...Black women. Some of these women, intimidated by threats and the withdrawal of Black male approval, did turn against their sisters. When threats did not prevent the attempted coalition of feminists, the resulting campus wide hysteria left some Black women beaten and raped. Whether the threats by Black men actually led to these assaults, or merely encouraged the climate of hostility within which they could occur, the results upon the women attacked were the
same.
War, imprisonment, and "the street" have decimated the ranks of Black males of marriageable age. The fury of many Black heterosexual women against white women who date Black men is rooted in this unequal sexual equation within the Black community, since whatever threatens to widen that equation is deeply and articulately resented. But this is essentially unconstructive resentment because it extends sideways only. It can never result in true progress on the issue because it does not question the vertical lines of power or authority, nor the sexist assumptions which dictate the terms of that competition. And the racism of white women might be better addressed where it is less complicated by their own sexual oppression. In this situation it is not the non..Black woman who calls the tune, but rather the Black man who turns away from himself in his sisters or who, through a fear borrowed from white men, reads her strength not as a resource but as a challenge.
All too often the message comes loud and clear to Black women from Black men: "I am the only prize worth having and there are not too many of me, and remember, I can always go elsewhere. So if you want me, you'd better stay in your place which is away from one another, or I will call you 'lesbian' and wipe you out." Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
The tactic of encouraging horizontal hostility to becloud more pressing issues of oppression is by no means new, nor limited to relations between women. The same tactic is used to encourage separation between Black women and Black men. In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men. For this reason, Black women's problems of promotion and tenure are not to be considered important since they are only "taking jobs away from Black men." Here again, energy is being wasted on fighting each other over the pitifully few crumbs allowed us rather than being used, in a joining of forces, to fight for a more realistic ratio of Black faculty. The latter would be a vertical battle against racist policies of the academic structure itself, one which could result in real power and change. It is the structure at the top which desires changelessness and which profits from these apparently endless kitchen wars.
Instead of keeping our attentions focused upon our real needs, enormous energy is being wasted in the Black community today in antilesbian hysteria. Yet women..identified women - those who sought their own destinies and attempted to execute them in the absence of male support - have been around in all of our communities for a long time. As Yvonne Flowers of York College pointed out in a recent discussion, the unmarried aunt, childless or otherwise, whose home and resources were often a welcome haven for different members of the family, was a
familiar figure in many of our childhoods. And within the homes of our Black communities today, it is not the Black lesbian who is battering and raping our underage girl..children out of displaced and sickening frustration.
The Black lesbian has come under increasing attack from both Black men and heterosexual Black women. In the same way that the existence of the self..defined Black woman is no threat to the self..defined Black man, the Black lesbian is an emotional threat only to those Black women whose feelings of kinship and love for other Black women are problematic in some way. For so long, we have been encouraged to view each other with suspicion, as eternal competitors, or as the visible face of our own self-rejection.
Yet traditionally, Black women have always bonded together in support of each other, however uneasily and in the face of whatever other allegiances which militated against that bonding. We have banded together with each other for wisdom and strength and support, even when it was only in relationship to one man. We need only look at the close, although highly complex and involved, relationships between African co..wives, or at the Amazon warriors of ancient Dahomey who fought together as the King's main and most ferocious bodyguard. We need only look at the more promising power wielded by the West African Market Women Associations of today, and those governments which have risen and fallen at their pleasure.
In a retelling of her life, a ninety-two-year-old Efik-Ibibio woman of Nigeria recalls her love for another woman:
I had a woman friend to whom I revealed my secrets. She was very fond of keeping secrets to herself. We acted as husband and wife. We always moved hand in glove and my husband and hers knew about our relationship. The villagers nicknamed us twin sisters. When I was out of gear with my husband, she would be the one to restore peace. I often sent my children to go and work for her in return for her kindnesses to me. My husband being more fortunate to get more pieces of land than her husband, allowed some to her, even though she was not my co-wife.*
On the West Coast of Africa, the Fon of Dahomey still have twelve different kinds of marriage. One of them is known as "giving the goat to the buck," where a woman of independent means marries another woman who then mayor may not bear children, all of whom will belong to the blood line of the first woman. Some marriages of this kind are arranged to provide heirs for women of means who wish to remain "free," and some are lesbian relationships. Marriages like these occur throughout Africa, in several different places among different peoples. Routinely, the women involved are accepted members of their communities, evaluated not by their sexuality but by their respective places within the community.
While a piece of each Black woman remembers the old ways of another place - when we enjoyed each other in a sisterhood of work and play and power - other pieces of us, less functional, eye one another with suspicion. In the interests of separation, Black women have been taught to view each other as always suspect, heartless competitors for the scarce male, the all-important prize that could legitimize our existence. This dehumanizing denial of self is no less lethal than the dehumanization of racism to which it is so closely allied.
If the recent attack upon lesbians in the Black community is based solely upon an aversion to the idea of sexual contact between members of the same sex (a contact which has existed for ages in most of the female compounds across the African continent), why then is the idea of sexual contact between Black men so much more easily accepted, or unrema.rked? Is the imagined threat simply the existence of a self..motivated, self-defined Black woman who will not fear nor suffer terrible retribution from the gods because she does not necessarily seek her face in a man's eyes, even if he has fathered her children? Female-headed households in the Black community are not always situations by default.
The distortion of relationship which says "I disagree with you, so I must destroy you" leaves us as Black people with basically uncreative victories, defeated in any common struggle. This jugular vein psychology is based on the fallacy that your assertion or affirmation of self is an attack upon my self - or that my defining myself will somehow prevent or retard your self, definition. The supposition that one sex needs the other's acquiescence in order to exist prevents both from moving together as self-defined persons toward a common goal.
This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty go, ing as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.)
At a recent Black literary conference, a heterosexual Black woman stated that to endorse lesbianism was to endorse the death of our race. This position reflects acute fright or a faulty reasoning, for once again it ascribes false power to difference. To the racist, Black people are so powerful that the presence of one can contaminate a whole lineage; to the heterosexist, lesbians are so powerful that the presence of one can contaminate the
whole sex. This position supposes that if we do not eradicate lesbianism in the Black community, all Black women will become lesbians. It also supposes that lesbians do not have children. Both suppositions are patently false.
As Black women, we must deal with all the realities of our lives which place us at risk as Black women -homosexual or heterosexual. In 1977 in Detroit, a young Black actress, Patricia Cowan, was invited to audition for a play called Hammer and was then hammered to death by the young Black male playwright. Patricia Cowan was not killed because she was Black. She was killed because she was a Black woman, and her cause belongs to us all. History does not record whether or not she was a lesbian, but only that she had a four-year-old child.
Of the four groups, Black and white women, Black and white men, Black women have the lowest average wage. This is a vital concern for us all, no matter with whom we sleep.
As Black women we have the right and responsibility to define ourselves and to seek our allies in common cause: with Black men against racism, and with each other and white women against sexism. But most of all, as Black women we have the right and responsibility to recognize each other without fear and to love where we choose. Both lesbian and heterosexual Black women today share a history of bonding and strength to which our sexual identities and our other differences must not blind us. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Racism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance.
Sexism: The belief in the inherent superiority of one sex and thereby the right to dominance.
Heterosexism: The belief in the inherentsuperiority of one pat, tern of lovingand thereby its right to dominance.
Homophobia: The fear of feelings of love for members of one's own sexand therefore the hatred of those feelings in others.
THEABOVE FORMS of human blindness stem from the same root - an inability to recognize the notion of difference as a dynamic human force, one which is enriching rather than threatening to the defined self, when there are shared goals.
To a large degree, at least verbally, the Black community has moved beyond the "two steps behind her man" concept of sexual relations sometimes mouthed as desirable during the sixties. This was a time when the myth of the Black matriarchy as a social disease was being presented by racist forces to redirect our attentions away from the real sources of Black oppression.
For Black women as well as Black men, it is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others - for their use and to our detriment. The development of self-defined Black women, ready to explore and pursue our power and interests within our communities, is a vital component in the war for Black liberation. The image of the Angolan woman with a baby on one arm and a gun in the other is neither romantic nor fanciful. When Black women in this country corne together to examine our sources of strength and support, and to recognize our common social, cultural, emotional, and political interests, it is a development which can only contribute to the power of the Black community as a whole. It can certainly never diminish it. For it is through the corning together of self-actualized individuals, female and male, that any real advances can be made. The old sexual power relationships based on a dominant/subordinate model between unequals have not served us as a people, nor as individuals.
Black women who define ourselves and our goals beyond the sphere of a sexual relationship can bring to any endeavor the realized focus of completed and therefore empowered individuals. Black women and Black men who recognize that the development of their particular strengths and interests does not diminish the other do not need to diffuse their energies fighting for control over each other. We can focus our attentions against the real economic, political, and social forces at the heart of this society which are ripping us and our children and our worlds apart.
Increasingly, despite opposition, Black women are corning together to explore and to alter those manifestations of our society which oppress us in different ways from those that oppress Black men. This is no threat to Black men. It is only seen as one by those Black men who choose to embody within themselves those same manifestations of female oppression. For instance, no Black man has ever been forced to bear a child he did not want or could not support. Enforced sterilization and unavailable abortions are tools of oppression against Black women, as is rape. Only to those Black men who are unclear about the pathways of their own definition can the self-actualization and self-protective bonding of Black women be seen as a threatening development.
Today, the red herring of lesbian...baiting is being used in the Black community to obscure the true face of racism/sexism. Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men. Too frequently, however, some Black men attempt to rule by fear those Black women who are more ally than enemy. These tactics are expressed as threats of emotional rejection: "Their poetry wasn't too bad but I couldn't take all those lezzies." The Black man say... ing this is code...warning every Black woman present interested in a relationship with a man - and most Black women are that (1) if she wishes to have her work considered by him she must eschew any other allegiance except to him and (2) any woman who wishes to retain his friendship and/or support had better not be "tainted" by woman-identified interests.
If such threats of labelling, vilification and/or emotional isolation are not enough to bring Black women docilely into camp as followers, or persuade us to avoid each other politically and emotionally, then the rule by terror can be expressed physically, as on the campus of a New York State college in the late 1970s, where Black women sought to come together around women's concerns. Phone calls threatening violence were made to those Black women who dared to explore the possibilities of a feminist connection with non...Black women. Some of these women, intimidated by threats and the withdrawal of Black male approval, did turn against their sisters. When threats did not prevent the attempted coalition of feminists, the resulting campus wide hysteria left some Black women beaten and raped. Whether the threats by Black men actually led to these assaults, or merely encouraged the climate of hostility within which they could occur, the results upon the women attacked were the
same.
War, imprisonment, and "the street" have decimated the ranks of Black males of marriageable age. The fury of many Black heterosexual women against white women who date Black men is rooted in this unequal sexual equation within the Black community, since whatever threatens to widen that equation is deeply and articulately resented. But this is essentially unconstructive resentment because it extends sideways only. It can never result in true progress on the issue because it does not question the vertical lines of power or authority, nor the sexist assumptions which dictate the terms of that competition. And the racism of white women might be better addressed where it is less complicated by their own sexual oppression. In this situation it is not the non..Black woman who calls the tune, but rather the Black man who turns away from himself in his sisters or who, through a fear borrowed from white men, reads her strength not as a resource but as a challenge.
All too often the message comes loud and clear to Black women from Black men: "I am the only prize worth having and there are not too many of me, and remember, I can always go elsewhere. So if you want me, you'd better stay in your place which is away from one another, or I will call you 'lesbian' and wipe you out." Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
The tactic of encouraging horizontal hostility to becloud more pressing issues of oppression is by no means new, nor limited to relations between women. The same tactic is used to encourage separation between Black women and Black men. In discussions around the hiring and firing of Black faculty at universities, the charge is frequently heard that Black women are more easily hired than are Black men. For this reason, Black women's problems of promotion and tenure are not to be considered important since they are only "taking jobs away from Black men." Here again, energy is being wasted on fighting each other over the pitifully few crumbs allowed us rather than being used, in a joining of forces, to fight for a more realistic ratio of Black faculty. The latter would be a vertical battle against racist policies of the academic structure itself, one which could result in real power and change. It is the structure at the top which desires changelessness and which profits from these apparently endless kitchen wars.
Instead of keeping our attentions focused upon our real needs, enormous energy is being wasted in the Black community today in antilesbian hysteria. Yet women..identified women - those who sought their own destinies and attempted to execute them in the absence of male support - have been around in all of our communities for a long time. As Yvonne Flowers of York College pointed out in a recent discussion, the unmarried aunt, childless or otherwise, whose home and resources were often a welcome haven for different members of the family, was a
familiar figure in many of our childhoods. And within the homes of our Black communities today, it is not the Black lesbian who is battering and raping our underage girl..children out of displaced and sickening frustration.
The Black lesbian has come under increasing attack from both Black men and heterosexual Black women. In the same way that the existence of the self..defined Black woman is no threat to the self..defined Black man, the Black lesbian is an emotional threat only to those Black women whose feelings of kinship and love for other Black women are problematic in some way. For so long, we have been encouraged to view each other with suspicion, as eternal competitors, or as the visible face of our own self-rejection.
Yet traditionally, Black women have always bonded together in support of each other, however uneasily and in the face of whatever other allegiances which militated against that bonding. We have banded together with each other for wisdom and strength and support, even when it was only in relationship to one man. We need only look at the close, although highly complex and involved, relationships between African co..wives, or at the Amazon warriors of ancient Dahomey who fought together as the King's main and most ferocious bodyguard. We need only look at the more promising power wielded by the West African Market Women Associations of today, and those governments which have risen and fallen at their pleasure.
In a retelling of her life, a ninety-two-year-old Efik-Ibibio woman of Nigeria recalls her love for another woman:
I had a woman friend to whom I revealed my secrets. She was very fond of keeping secrets to herself. We acted as husband and wife. We always moved hand in glove and my husband and hers knew about our relationship. The villagers nicknamed us twin sisters. When I was out of gear with my husband, she would be the one to restore peace. I often sent my children to go and work for her in return for her kindnesses to me. My husband being more fortunate to get more pieces of land than her husband, allowed some to her, even though she was not my co-wife.*
On the West Coast of Africa, the Fon of Dahomey still have twelve different kinds of marriage. One of them is known as "giving the goat to the buck," where a woman of independent means marries another woman who then mayor may not bear children, all of whom will belong to the blood line of the first woman. Some marriages of this kind are arranged to provide heirs for women of means who wish to remain "free," and some are lesbian relationships. Marriages like these occur throughout Africa, in several different places among different peoples. Routinely, the women involved are accepted members of their communities, evaluated not by their sexuality but by their respective places within the community.
While a piece of each Black woman remembers the old ways of another place - when we enjoyed each other in a sisterhood of work and play and power - other pieces of us, less functional, eye one another with suspicion. In the interests of separation, Black women have been taught to view each other as always suspect, heartless competitors for the scarce male, the all-important prize that could legitimize our existence. This dehumanizing denial of self is no less lethal than the dehumanization of racism to which it is so closely allied.
If the recent attack upon lesbians in the Black community is based solely upon an aversion to the idea of sexual contact between members of the same sex (a contact which has existed for ages in most of the female compounds across the African continent), why then is the idea of sexual contact between Black men so much more easily accepted, or unrema.rked? Is the imagined threat simply the existence of a self..motivated, self-defined Black woman who will not fear nor suffer terrible retribution from the gods because she does not necessarily seek her face in a man's eyes, even if he has fathered her children? Female-headed households in the Black community are not always situations by default.
The distortion of relationship which says "I disagree with you, so I must destroy you" leaves us as Black people with basically uncreative victories, defeated in any common struggle. This jugular vein psychology is based on the fallacy that your assertion or affirmation of self is an attack upon my self - or that my defining myself will somehow prevent or retard your self, definition. The supposition that one sex needs the other's acquiescence in order to exist prevents both from moving together as self-defined persons toward a common goal.
This kind of action is a prevalent error among oppressed peoples. It is based upon the false notion that there is only a limited and particular amount of freedom that must be divided up between us, with the largest and juiciest pieces of liberty go, ing as spoils to the victor or the stronger. So instead of joining together to fight for more, we quarrel between ourselves for a larger slice of the one pie. Black women fight between ourselves over men, instead of pursuing and using who we are and our strengths for lasting change; Black women and men fight between ourselves over who has more of a right to freedom, instead of seeing each other's struggles as part of our own and vital to our common goals; Black and white women fight between ourselves over who is the more oppressed, instead of seeing those areas in which our causes are the same. (Of course, this last separation is worsened by the intransigent racism that white women too often fail to, or cannot, address in themselves.)
At a recent Black literary conference, a heterosexual Black woman stated that to endorse lesbianism was to endorse the death of our race. This position reflects acute fright or a faulty reasoning, for once again it ascribes false power to difference. To the racist, Black people are so powerful that the presence of one can contaminate a whole lineage; to the heterosexist, lesbians are so powerful that the presence of one can contaminate the
whole sex. This position supposes that if we do not eradicate lesbianism in the Black community, all Black women will become lesbians. It also supposes that lesbians do not have children. Both suppositions are patently false.
As Black women, we must deal with all the realities of our lives which place us at risk as Black women -homosexual or heterosexual. In 1977 in Detroit, a young Black actress, Patricia Cowan, was invited to audition for a play called Hammer and was then hammered to death by the young Black male playwright. Patricia Cowan was not killed because she was Black. She was killed because she was a Black woman, and her cause belongs to us all. History does not record whether or not she was a lesbian, but only that she had a four-year-old child.
Of the four groups, Black and white women, Black and white men, Black women have the lowest average wage. This is a vital concern for us all, no matter with whom we sleep.
As Black women we have the right and responsibility to define ourselves and to seek our allies in common cause: with Black men against racism, and with each other and white women against sexism. But most of all, as Black women we have the right and responsibility to recognize each other without fear and to love where we choose. Both lesbian and heterosexual Black women today share a history of bonding and strength to which our sexual identities and our other differences must not blind us. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
About the Author
A writer, activist, and mother of two, Audre Lorde grew up in 1930s Harlem. She earned a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University, received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for poetry, and was New York State’s Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1993. She is the author of twelve books, including ZAMI and THE BLACK UNICORN. Lorde died of cancer at the age of fifty-eight in 1992. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Product details
- ASIN : B006L7RCEI
- Publisher : Crossing Press (Jan. 4 2012)
- Language : English
- File size : 2862 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
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- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 210 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #134,370 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #10 in Lesbian Studies eBooks
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- #19 in Black & African American Literature (Kindle Store)
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Poet, novelist, activist, and mother of two, AUDRE LORDE grew up Harlem in the 1930s. She earned a master's degree in library science from Columbia University and received a National Endowment for the Arts grant. She is the author of 12 books. She died in 1992.
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Reviewed in Canada on December 6, 2019
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What not to love about it? Don't we all wish she was still alive? She is the Mother of all Mothers. I love every inch, corner, of it. It's a book that you refer to numerous times, again and again. Because it's just one of those books and everyone who loves Audre or wants to learn more about civil rights or whatever, I recommend it highly! it was one of my first books as i was coming to understand my self and identity, power and Black Feminism is really all about, tenderness with each other, i fail at these at times, to many times then i would like to admit but i am quite happy to that is always my reference. Reading her works gives me the vibes of love. I am young with feminist, who still has a lot to learn but has learn so much and grown so much already. Audre is my to go to, if and only if white women would stop taking her work out of context..kmt... anyhow!
Reviewed in Canada on September 6, 2017
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arrived so quickly. a truly beautiful book that is crucial for any anti-racist intersectional feminist
or mother, or lover, or lesbian, or poet, or activist
i have passed it along to so many people in my circles
or mother, or lover, or lesbian, or poet, or activist
i have passed it along to so many people in my circles
Reviewed in Canada on April 5, 2017
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All those half-formed conversations and debates you've been having about intersectionality, feminism, activism? Check in with her first. She's laid it all out, perfectly and beautifully and from a place of both strength and care. Essential reading for everyone.
Reviewed in Canada on November 21, 2018
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One of the most amazing books ever written. Book was in Excellent condition.
Reviewed in Canada on March 29, 2014
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Iloved this book. Audre Lorde is a black lesbian poet. This book is a collection of her essays and speeches. I'd like to read some of her poetry. It's a good book for anyone who wants to be sensitive understanding or get to know themselves better.
Reviewed in Canada on July 19, 2019
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Enjoyed the read
Reviewed in Canada on August 26, 2018
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This is such an important and incredible book.
Top reviews from other countries
Joanie Hieger Zosike
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry and Politics
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2023Verified Purchase
Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, perhaps her most seminal work, contains essays and speeches recorded at the height of her powers.
As a Black Lesbian feminist poet, mother, and person in a biracial relationship, she had a lot to say about a lot of things. Her honesty and eloquence were unparalleled. Her poetry was fearless. She served as a spokesperson on behalf of oppressed people, and was much beloved—and often feared. She held herself up to the same high standards of scrutiny that she did her contemporaries. Her untimely death to breast cancer (which she chronicled in her book «Cancel Journals ») created torrential grief in her communities and far beyond. A street near Hunter college in New York City now bears her name.
Sister Outsider, however, is not an easy book to read. Aside from being intellectually brilliant and unassailable in terms of the airtight arguments Lorde presents, Sister Outsider is somewhat harsh and relentless. It is easier read piecemeal in small portions because it is presented at such a pitch that the reader can quickly be overwhelmed.
Of course, her essay « Poetry is Not a Luxury » first published in 1977 in Chrysalis, despite its seriousness, is a joy to read.
It is surprisingly fresh and completely relevant. This could be one of those timeless essays that will never become passé. As art is always on the chopping block, its efficacy perpetually debated, it would be a great text to memorize and quote at will when needed. It is often needed.
Another highlight for me in this book is her « Open Letter to Mary Daly, » criticizing the radical feminist’s book, Gyn/Ecology for its treatment of female circumcision, which did not recognize or consult the black feminist perspective. This microaggressive erasure was further aggravated by the fact that Daly never replied to Lorde’s letter voicing her objections, before it even became an open letter. Despite the letter’s friendly tone and patina of graciousness, Lorde basically « tore Daly a new one. »
The classic interview between Audre and her good friend Adrienne Rich is a total gem. Their repartee rings authentic and neither of them skirt around uncomfortable issues, but rather face them head on in a noncombatant, pacific manner.
Equally brilliant are the essays on the erotic in poetry, citing the creation of poetry as a primal force; and « The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, » of which title speaks for itself.
The final essay involves the US invasion of Grenada, the birthplace and home of Audrey Lord’s mother. This essay is so moving probably because of personal connection to it. However, her analysis of historical precedents and her willingness to expose the rotten teeth of the US technomilitary complex as it relates to a history rife with racist, is stunningly courageous. In this last essay, she never misses a beat, connecting the dots between the US’s paternalistic involvement (and financial entanglements) in South America and its island possessions. Grenada, prior to the invasion of American and British forces, was an independent entity, governed by an all black leadership. The carnage left behind after said invasion was brutal, unnecessary and totally racist.
And that’s what makes Audre Lorde’s work, so hard to take at times because of its blatant and unrelenting insistence on telling the truth, a blueprint for students of the peace and justice movement, scholars, and revolutionaries to this day.
As a Black Lesbian feminist poet, mother, and person in a biracial relationship, she had a lot to say about a lot of things. Her honesty and eloquence were unparalleled. Her poetry was fearless. She served as a spokesperson on behalf of oppressed people, and was much beloved—and often feared. She held herself up to the same high standards of scrutiny that she did her contemporaries. Her untimely death to breast cancer (which she chronicled in her book «Cancel Journals ») created torrential grief in her communities and far beyond. A street near Hunter college in New York City now bears her name.
Sister Outsider, however, is not an easy book to read. Aside from being intellectually brilliant and unassailable in terms of the airtight arguments Lorde presents, Sister Outsider is somewhat harsh and relentless. It is easier read piecemeal in small portions because it is presented at such a pitch that the reader can quickly be overwhelmed.
Of course, her essay « Poetry is Not a Luxury » first published in 1977 in Chrysalis, despite its seriousness, is a joy to read.
It is surprisingly fresh and completely relevant. This could be one of those timeless essays that will never become passé. As art is always on the chopping block, its efficacy perpetually debated, it would be a great text to memorize and quote at will when needed. It is often needed.
Another highlight for me in this book is her « Open Letter to Mary Daly, » criticizing the radical feminist’s book, Gyn/Ecology for its treatment of female circumcision, which did not recognize or consult the black feminist perspective. This microaggressive erasure was further aggravated by the fact that Daly never replied to Lorde’s letter voicing her objections, before it even became an open letter. Despite the letter’s friendly tone and patina of graciousness, Lorde basically « tore Daly a new one. »
The classic interview between Audre and her good friend Adrienne Rich is a total gem. Their repartee rings authentic and neither of them skirt around uncomfortable issues, but rather face them head on in a noncombatant, pacific manner.
Equally brilliant are the essays on the erotic in poetry, citing the creation of poetry as a primal force; and « The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, » of which title speaks for itself.
The final essay involves the US invasion of Grenada, the birthplace and home of Audrey Lord’s mother. This essay is so moving probably because of personal connection to it. However, her analysis of historical precedents and her willingness to expose the rotten teeth of the US technomilitary complex as it relates to a history rife with racist, is stunningly courageous. In this last essay, she never misses a beat, connecting the dots between the US’s paternalistic involvement (and financial entanglements) in South America and its island possessions. Grenada, prior to the invasion of American and British forces, was an independent entity, governed by an all black leadership. The carnage left behind after said invasion was brutal, unnecessary and totally racist.
And that’s what makes Audre Lorde’s work, so hard to take at times because of its blatant and unrelenting insistence on telling the truth, a blueprint for students of the peace and justice movement, scholars, and revolutionaries to this day.
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Chelscey
4.0 out of 5 stars
Give this your entire attention
Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2022Verified Purchase
This is my first foray into Lorde’s writing as I don’t typically read poetry. That being said, Lorde’s writing is gorgeous, visceral, and still holds so much truth even close to 40 years after “Sister Outsider” was originally published. That’s really why I wanted to read this, to better understand and educate myself on racism and sexism in a way that I, as a white woman, don’t experience and don’t see the way that black women do, or lesbian POC would experience. I learned so much from this collection of essays and interviews, both about feminism and racism. It took me much longer to get through this relatively short book because I often had to sit with what I just read, to really digest it and hear what Lorde had to say, which is written with incredible passion. But it also took me awhile to finish because the organization of the different essays wasn’t well thought out, and the different essays got a little repetitive.
Even though I haven’t read any of Lorde’s work before this, I don’t think it’s completely necessary, either. Will you have a deeper appreciation for some of the included speeches in this book if you are already familiar with Lorde’s work? Absolutely! But not having that doesn’t take away from the message in these essays, nor does it diminish the impassioned way Lorde writes. That being said, it’s hard to say which of the collection was my favorite in this book. I think Lorde’s writing in the later essays in this book struck me the hardest, like The Uses of Anger, Learning from the 60’s, and Eye to Eye, mainly because Lorde’s passion, rage, and despair are so clear-eyed in those essays.
This book requires a lot of brain power to read, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but just know ahead of time that this is a book that demands your full attention for every line of every page, and if you don’t give it that, you’ll have a harder time understanding things. Lorde states her views clearly and powerfully about intersectionality before it really was a thing, but inevitably because this is a collection of independent work, there is repetition and disjointedness between the different essays. That's the only reason why this gets 4 stars from me instead of 5. If you’re looking for a book on feminism and social justice, Lorde’s words are still a must read!
Even though I haven’t read any of Lorde’s work before this, I don’t think it’s completely necessary, either. Will you have a deeper appreciation for some of the included speeches in this book if you are already familiar with Lorde’s work? Absolutely! But not having that doesn’t take away from the message in these essays, nor does it diminish the impassioned way Lorde writes. That being said, it’s hard to say which of the collection was my favorite in this book. I think Lorde’s writing in the later essays in this book struck me the hardest, like The Uses of Anger, Learning from the 60’s, and Eye to Eye, mainly because Lorde’s passion, rage, and despair are so clear-eyed in those essays.
This book requires a lot of brain power to read, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but just know ahead of time that this is a book that demands your full attention for every line of every page, and if you don’t give it that, you’ll have a harder time understanding things. Lorde states her views clearly and powerfully about intersectionality before it really was a thing, but inevitably because this is a collection of independent work, there is repetition and disjointedness between the different essays. That's the only reason why this gets 4 stars from me instead of 5. If you’re looking for a book on feminism and social justice, Lorde’s words are still a must read!
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Mert
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still touching and beautiful
Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2023Verified Purchase
I’ve been wanting to read this groundbreaking novel for a long time and I’ve finally found the opportunity to read it. As a person who looks from a contemporary perspective, I can confidently say that the arguments, the words that Lorde provides us with still resonate with today’s issues. Her writing is timeless.
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