Introduction,
Audre Lorde was a Black American writer, feminist, and civil rights activist. She was born on February 18, 1934, in New York City, USA, to West Indian immigrant parents. Lorde grew up in Harlem and attended Hunter College High School, where she began to develop her interest in writing and activism.
Lorde went on to study at Hunter College and Columbia University, where she earned a master’s degree in library science. She began writing poetry and essays in the 1960s and quickly became known for her powerful and unapologetic voice on issues related to race, gender, and sexuality.
Throughout her life, Lorde was an active participant in various social justice movements, including the civil rights and feminist movements. She was a founding member of the Women’s Coalition of St. Croix and served as the poet laureate of New York from 1991 to 1992.
Lorde’s works, including “Sister Outsider,” “The Black Unicorn,” and “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name,” continue to inspire and influence writers and activists around the world. Lorde passed away on November 17, 1992, in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, after a long battle with cancer.
it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
my experience with people who tried to label me was that they usually did it to either dismiss me or use me.
There are many kinds of power, used and unused, acknowledged or otherwise.
Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.
Survival is the greatest gift of love.
Divide and conquer must become define and empower
Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever.
Even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
I am my best work – a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am on the cusp of change and the curve is shifting fast.
I am still learning – how to take joy in all the people I am, how to use all my selves in the service of what I believe, how to accept when I fail and rejoice when I succeed.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That’s the beginning of social protest.
If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.
If you can’t change reality, change your perceptions of it.
Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.
It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America’s mistakes. But we will if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.
Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.
Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy.
Oppression is as American as apple pie.
Our visions begin with our desires.
Revolution is not a one-time event.
Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.
There is nothing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lends the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
We are all in the process of becoming.
Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.
Without community, there is no liberation.
You are the one that you are looking for.
You cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.
Your silence will not protect you.
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action.
In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged.
I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.
I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence.
We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.
Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.
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To accept someone when everything is going right is easy. But when things are falling apart around you and you stick together, that’s the test of a relationship. Love is when we have every reason to break up but we do not.
We share a common interest, survival, and it cannot be pursued in isolation from others simply because their differences make us uncomfortable.
Unacknowledged class differences rob women of each others’ energy and creative insight.
Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.
Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.
Among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children there can be no hierarchies of oppression.
Your silence will not protect you.
I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.
I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life.
When I dare to be powerful to use my strength in the service of my vision then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
We must wake up knowing we have work to do and go to bed knowing we’ve done it.
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.
I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, nor hurt feelings, nor answering anger; for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts.
Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.
