I ran my fingers across the binds of the books, occasionally drawing one towards me and skimming its foreword. Curiosity lured me to Audre Lorde’s collection of essays and speeches titled, “Sister Outsider”. A Black woman, lesbian, feminist, and poet, Lorde is known for her activism, all while growing up in the 50s. Knowing little about Lorde, I began my pursuit to find out more about her through her writing.
The book opens by taking the readers back to Lorde’s trip to Russia where she highlights the culture and her views on socialism. Her style of writing captivates the reader from the start. From storytelling to expository writing, she varies her techniques to keep readers engaged and informed. After writing about her trip to Russia, she then follows up with one of her most renowned essays, “Poetry Is Not A Luxury”.
“Poetry Is Not A Luxury” had to have been a favorite. The ability she has to describe her thoughts and ideas is admirable. The message that she strives to convey is that poetry is unique in the way that it allows writers to express themselves through an experience or concept. Lorde herself would frequently memorize poems in response to questions that regarded her feelings. For her it has always meant survival. She writes, “I speak here of poetry as the revelation or distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean.”
Several of her essays and poems analyze literature, race, and feminist studies because she made the conscious decision to speak the unspoken, taking great risk during the mid to late 1900s. Throughout the book I also came to understand the reason as to why Lorde’s writings are such acclaimed works. They are confrontational and unapologetic. She in no way is trying to soften or moderate her ideas for the sake of others. In the essay, “The Transformation Of Silence Into Language And Action”, Lorde writes, “My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you”. This seems to be the approach that Lorde takes and wishes for other women and people of color.
Lorde calls out many American principles and the institutionalized racism found in many countries, not only America. One of the issues that she writes about is that from the moment a child is born Black, hatred is practically spoonfed. From this comes anger, but anger is entirely different from hatred because anger leads to change. Hatred leads to destruction and death.
“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” is referring directly to white feminism and it means just that. The patriarchal model cannot be taken down by the same principles of white feminism. Separation between women will never lead to liberation and ignoring the difference between the lives of Black and white women is yet another step backwards. It is only through the joining of forces and self-education that a patriarchal structure embedded so deeply could potentially be undone.
There were many times while reading through Lorde’s writings that it was necessary for me to reread the section to find the meaning of its contents. In “Uses Of Erotic”, Lorde returns the definition of erotic, a word previously used demeaningly towards women. She explains erotic here as “an assertion of the life force of woman; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our lives”. Historically, the use of erotic brought unease, but here Lorde uses it as a source of empowerment, to which she urges that it not be confused with the obscene.
I’d say “Sister Outsider” is no easy beach read. It isn’t usually in one’s comfort zone to read such a confrontational book, though I recommend it nonetheless. It sparks a great deal of thought and perspective. Audre Lorde should be given more recognition for her courage to write not only for women but as well as for queer and people of color.
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