Author: Sam O.

Throughout the semester, we have been learning about Audre Lorde and her many accomplishments. She is a black lesbian feminist; she dedicated her life and creative talent to confronting and bringing attention to the injustices of classism, racism, homophobia, and sexism. Lorde is a keystone for many women and helped them find who they are in their core. An example of how she inspires through her poetry from her time in Berlin is A Woman Speaks. Within the poem, there are many expressions that as her affirmations of worth and power, one of them being “my sisters/witches in Dahomey”. (20-21) Lorde is likening herself as a fierce woman warrior, which she is, but using a part of her history to identify as such. Lorde also sets herself apart without apology, “I am/ woman/ and not white” this is who she is, and she confidently knows this about herself. (32-4)

Lorde’s poem “A Litany for Survival,” depicts a world in which she was “never meant to survive.” As the poem suggests, she learns through the experience of fear and is able to speak out because “ it is better to speak/ remembering/ we were never meant to survive.” (42-44) Lorde continuously discovered lessons. In Zami a New Spelling of My Name, she learned to create a tribe “At the time, suffering was clearly what we did best. We became the branded because we learned how to make a virtue out of it”, in order to help each other. (82)The connections she makes with people help her grow and be able to never give up on herself through tough situations, the things that threatened her survival. In order to survive as a woman, Lorde faces an impasse after her mastectomy in The Cancer Journals when “The emphasis on wearing a prosthesis is a way of avoiding having women come to terms with their own pain and loss, and therapy, with their own strength”, to take the prosthetic and not come to terms of what happened or not take it and be able to move on in her life stronger for it. (49)

I choose to the creative option of our assignment and wrote a poem with Lorde’s lessons in mind:

Within this three-stanza poem, I express the lessons I have learned this semester with Audre Lorde. The first stanza, not giving up and keep fighting through the bleak situations you may find yourself in. All through The Cancer Journals, Lorde has to find the things that will help her instead of impeding her. Being confronted with a woman trying to convince Lorde that she will be more whole with a prosthetic, she knows that it will not give back what has been taken from her. She knows that in order to heal she needs to accept what has happened and be able to live without her missing breast, as she is a new person without it and this experience has brought new insight into her life and brought new wisdom.

In the second stanza, the lesson is connecting with others in order to learn about yourself. In Zami a New Spelling of My Name, This is a lesson that Lorde learned at a young age, “I met girls with whom I could share feelings and dreams and ideas without fear. I found adults who tolerated my feelings and ideas without punishment for insolence, and even a few who respected and admired them”, and even later in life when she created a tribe of women who supported her, it is these connections that let us differentiate whom we are compared to others. (82) As no two people are the same, it is important that we see this and find the people that we want in our lives and the ones we do not.

The final stanza is a lesson that I find to be the most important. As much as Lorde is a poet and essayist, she is also a fantastic teacher. In her essay Poet as Teacher, there is no difference between a poet and a teacher, “A writer by definition is a teacher. Whether or not I ever teach another class, every poem I create is an attempt at a piece of truth formed from the images of my experience shared with as many people as can or will hear me”, as you learn more about yourself you are able to teach others through your experiences. As a poet Lorde is able to connect with so many people teach the lessons she learned through her experiences to help whoever reads her writings.

Works Cited

LORDE, AUDRE. CANCER JOURNALS. PENGUIN Books, 2020.

Lorde, Audre. “A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147275/a-litany-for-survival.

Lorde, Audre. “A Woman Speaks by Audre Lorde.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42583/a-woman-speaks.

Lorde, Audre. Zami, a New Spelling of My Name: a Biomythography. Crossing Press, 1996.“Lorde_Poet As Teacher (1).Pdf.” Google Drive, Google, drive.google.com/file/d/141MluaBpTmvmmRT4vLzFzDIdMvsS_YXP/view.

Sara Ahmed speaks to the intense difficulties that feminists face and the extra struggles added to feminists of color. The information is enlightening, especially as I have no knowledge beforehand about these topics. Looking more specifically at “The figure of the angry black woman” and starting with the emotion of anger, in a society where showing any kind of emotion is unprofessional and showing your anger and unacceptance of something could be considered sacrilege. As Ahmed says “
“Reasonable, thoughtful arguments are dismissed as anger . . .” because it is something that isn’t agreed upon in society, therefore, needs to be pushed away and rejected. You might not even be specifically angry and just feeling strongly about a specific topic you are disagreeing on, but because of those strong feelings and your disagreement of that specific topic you are seen as unprofessional and can’t separate your emotions from facts, even if the facts that you say are truthful. In the end, this rejection and dismissal can make you angry which seems to become “read as confirmation”.

When you take what I’ve said before and add that you are a woman of color you lose a lot of visibility and can already be dismissed before a word has left your mouth. When you look at the relationship between white women and women of color, there is a double standard. It seems that woman of color needs to fight with the same feminist Ideals but sacrifice their own in the process of helping “white women . . . getting past guilt”. If a woman of color were “to speak out of anger” she is immediately a “cause of tension” for stating the racism in feminist groups and not allowing white women to get past their “guilt”.

In relation to Sister Outsider “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism” by Audre Lorde states that “Women responding to racism means women responding to anger” (124), this makes it seem as if it is unavoidable and inevitable, and it is unavoidable because this anger comes from “exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and co-optation.” (124) Lorde wants us to not fear the anger but use it as fuel for growth as “corrective surgery, not guilt” (124). Without the anger that both Ahmed and Lorde state there would be no change and there would be no fuel to give women the drive in order to speak out and force the problems to be seen and heard and hopefully, to create change.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Why do you think it is frowned upon to show emotions in a professional setting when bringing up issues such as racism?
2. How effective is the use of anger, especially for women of color?

I am a second semester senior and double majoring in Art and English and minoring in Anthropology. I am currently trying to be a finalist to intern at the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) so please wish me luck on that. I have a calico cat named Lenny, she’s about 18 – 19, I’ve had since I was in pre-school and acts as if she just turned 3. Not entirely sure what else to add but thank you for reading!