Tag: Audre Lorde

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Five landmark LGBTQIA2S+ books

It’s Pride Month! In honour of celebrating Pride Month, I’ll be sharing some LGBTQIA2S+ book recommendations. Keep checking in each week for more recommendations.

LGBTQIA2S+ = Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual, Two-Spirit, and plus (anyone who doesn’t fit into one specific category)

Landmarks are things that stand out to us and help us understand the progress we’re making on our journey.

I believe landmark books are ones that made a significant impact, that caught peoples’ attention and was able to challenge their perspective. These are the books that mark changes in our society’s literary journey, maybe as turning points or cultural flash points.

They always challenge some status quo, but also deeply connect with people, and (hopefully) help others move past some preconceived notions.

For this week, I wanted to highlight some landmark LGBTQIA2S+ books. Each of these caused a commotion, made people uncomfortable, but also helped so many people feel seen and opened doors for conversations.

These books are historically important and yet still relevant today.

I believe it’s important to recognize the impact these books had both at the time they were published and on the literary community afterwards. I want to give them their flowers.

These are also great books to gain a better insight into the context and development of LGBTQIA2S+ literature. These had a huge impact on how the literature evolved and changed, and how these themes were perceived by the cis-hetero side of the literary world.

Just remember, this is a list of only five books, it’s not exhaustive, but it’s a good place to start.

Photo by Viviana Couto Sayalero on Unsplash

Five landmark LGBTQIA2S+ books

Here’s a list of five landmark LGBTQIA2S+ books.

  1. Another Country by James Baldwin (1962)
  2. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (1973)
  3. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde (1982)
  4. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993)
  5. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters (1998)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published

Another Country (1962)

by James Baldwin

  • Year Published: 1962
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, lgbtqia+, literary, challenging, emotional, reflective, slow-paced

From one of the most important American novelists of the twentieth century—a novel of sexual, racial, political, artistic passions, set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France.

Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.

Links:

Rubyfruit Jungle (1973)

by Rita Mae Brown

  • Year Published: 1973
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, classics, lgbtqia+, emotional, reflective, medium-paced
  • Winner of the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award and the Lee Lynch Classic Book Award

A landmark coming-of-age novel that launched the career of one of this country’s most distinctive voices, Rubyfruit Jungle remains a transformative work more than forty years after its original publication. In bawdy, moving prose, Rita Mae Brown tells the story of Molly Bolt, the adoptive daughter of a dirt-poor Southern couple who boldly forges her own path in America. With her startling beauty and crackling wit, Molly finds that women are drawn to her wherever she goes—and she refuses to apologize for loving them back. This literary milestone continues to resonate with its message about being true to yourself and, against the odds, living happily ever after.

Links:

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

by Audre Lorde

  • Year Published: 1982
  • Storygraph Categories:
    nonfiction, feminism, lgbtqia+, memoir, emotional, inspiring, reflective, medium-paced
  • Created a new genre of literature called biomythography, which combines history, biography, and myth

If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.

A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents’ native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships — suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone — until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde’s story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.

Links:

Stone Butch Blues (1993)

by Leslie Feinberg (she/her/zie/hir)

  • Year Published: 1993
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, lgbtqia+, literary, emotional, reflective, sad, medium-paced
  • Considered a cult classic in LGBTQIA2S+ communities
  • Won the 1994 American Library Association Gay & Lesbian Book Award (now the Stonewall Book Award), and finalist for the 1994 Lambda LIterary Award for Lesbian Fiction

Woman or man? This internationally acclaimed novel looks at the world through the eyes of Jess Goldberg, a masculine girl growing up in the “Ozzie and Harriet” McCarthy era and coming out as a young butch lesbian in the pre-Stonewall gay drag bars of a blue-collar town. Stone Butch Blues traces a propulsive journey, powerfully evoking history and politics while portraying an extraordinary protagonist full of longing, vulnerability, and working-class grit. This once-underground classic takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride of gender transformation and exploration and ultimately speaks to the heart of anyone who has ever suffered or gloried in being different.

Links:

Tipping the Velvet (1998)

by Sarah Waters

  • Year Published: 1998
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, historical, lgbtqia+, adventurous, emotional, medium-paced
  • Won the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian fiction in 2000 and the Betty Trask Award (for Commonwealth citizens’ first novel published before the age of 35)

Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty’s dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-hall stars in an all-singing and dancing double act. At the same time, behind closed doors, they admit their attraction to each other and their affair begins.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which books you love or that you would recommend. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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5 Black American Women Authors to read for Black History Month – Part 1

After a long delay, here is part two! I know it’s no longer Black History Month, but I wanted to make sure I shared part two of this.

It’s February which means it’s Black History Month, so I’ll be sharing content about Black authors. Most of what I’ll be sharing this month will come from Black American authors, as those are what I’m currently most familiar with. But it’s important to read from all over the world. Feel free to share your suggestions in the comments below!

As I mentioned last week in Part 1, I think it’s vital to diversify your reading and read from authors of many different perspectives.

There are great authors in every area of life and every part of the world. Each of them bring their own unique perspective and thoughts, as everyone has a unique experience of the world.

I believe the more you diversify your reading, the more you’ll understand the world and the more empathy you’ll have for everyone around you.

Everyone has their own unique experience of the world, but you can learn so much about others’ experience through the content they create, including books. The more you listen to others, the more you can discover your personal blind spots and unconscious biases. Just because you haven’t experienced it, doesn’t mean that no one else has.

So, for Black History Month, I highly recommend finding books to read by Black authors. You don’t have to read them this month. With so many people talking about Black History Month and focusing on Black voices, it’s easy to find books to buy or add to your TBR list.

For this month, I’ll be sharing some Black American women that I admire and would recommend reading their works.

All of these women have had a huge impact on society and the literary world, and they’re all incredibly well known. Think of this as more of an introduction to the classics and a starting point, not a deep-dive into the lesser known. But please share any other suggestions you have in a comment below.

I shared five women last week (see Part 1 here), and I’m back with another five this week. I’ve listed them in order of the year they were born.

Five Black American Women Authors to Read

Here’s a list of five Black American women authors to read for Black History Month.

  1. Audre Lorde – poet & essayist
  2. Dr. Angela Davis – nonfiction, civil rights icon
  3. Alice Walker – novelist
  4. Octavia Butler – science fiction novelist
  5. bell hooks – feminist theorist

Keep reading to find out more about each one!

And don’t forget to come back next week to learn about the next five!

1. Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

  • 1934-1992
  • Died at the age of 58
  • Genre(s):
  • Key books: Sister Outsider, The Black Unicorn
  • Key Essay: The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master’s House

Audre Lorde identified herself as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”.

A lot of her efforts were related to social activism, working to confront and address various areas of injustice, including racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, both through political activist work and as a thought leader. Her written work centered around feminism, lesbianism, illness and civil rights, all of it as an exploration of the black female identity.

Lorde’s work was heavily focused on the area of intersectionality, as she intertwined her personal experience (with all aspects of her identity) with broader social movements. She mostly focused on race, class, and sexuality, and actively confronted issues of racism within feminist spheres.

Links:

2. Dr. Angela Davis (1944-)

  • Born: 1944
  • Genre(s): Nonfiction
  • Both an activist and a scholar
  • Key books: Women, Race & Class, Are Prisons Obsolete?

Dr. Angela Davis is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She studied first at the University of California and completed her doctorate at the Humboldt University of Berlin.

After she completed her doctorate, she moved back to the United States and became heavily involved in activism. She joined the Communist Party and worked with the Black Panther party, along with heavily campaigning against the Vietnam war. She’s an influential though leader from the second-wave feminist movement and is now a key figure in the prison abolitionist movement.

Throughout her life, she has stayed consistent in advocating against imperialism, racism, sexism, and the prison–industrial complex (part of the prison abolition movement), and showing her support for gay rights and other social justice movements. She has been a long time advocate for the freedom of Palestine and understanding the need for international collective liberation.

Links:

3. Alice Walker (1944-)

  • Born 1944
  • Genre(s): Literary Fiction, Poetry & Essays
  • Key books: The Color Purple

Important Note: Nowadays, Alice Walker is considered controversial for her anti-semitic comments and support of David Icke (rebuttal here on Al Jazeera Opinions and she’s been posting a lot about Free Palestine on her website), along with her TERF (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) comments as she puts her support behind J.K. Rowling (link to a post about it by Out and her post on her website). I include her here because of her impact through her novel The Color Purple.

Alice Walker rose to fame with her novel The Color Purple, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1982. She was the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize.

She’s been a prolific writer, with 17 novels and short story collections, 12 non-fiction works and collections of essays and poetry, and continues writing on her website (www.alicewalkersgarden.com).

Walker’s work focused on the intersection of being both black and a woman. She has very specific feminist views, mostly advocating for women of colour. She even coined the term “womanist” to mean “a black feminist or feminist of color.”

Links:

4. Octavia Butler (1947-2006)

  • 1947-2006
  • Died at the age of 58
  • Genre(s): Science Fiction
  • Key books: Kindred, Parable of the Sower

Octavia Butler is a prominent American science fiction writer, who won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. She’s most known for blending science fiction with African American spiritualism and is associated with Afrofuturism (“speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th-century technoculture”).

She read science fiction from a young age but was disappointed with its portrayals of race and class. As a writer, she intentionally wrote herself into the genre by using her perspective as an African American woman.

Butler has been influential in the science fiction literary world, especially for people of colour. Her works often highlight themes related to race, gender, class, and power.

Links:

5. bell hooks (1952-2021)

  • 1952-2021
  • Died at the age of 69
  • Genre(s): Feminist Theory
  • Key books: Ain’t I A Woman?, Feminist Theory, All About Love

bell hooks was born as Gloria Jean Watkins, and her pen name was borrowed from Bell Blair Hooks, her maternal great-grandmother. hooks is an American author and social activist, with most of her writings centred around race, feminism, and class.

hooks authored around 40 books during her lifetime. Most of her work was around the intersectionality of race, capitalism and gender, specifically looking at the systems of oppression and class domination.

She always wrote her name in lowercase letters as an ode to her great-grandmother and to symbolize that the focus should always be on the ideas conveyed not the person sharing them.

Links:

Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of authors. If you missed it, you can read part 1 here.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which books written by these women that you love or would recommend. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read anything by these authors?

What did you think of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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Five modern classic American women poets

Do you want to read more poetry but not sure where to start?

For April, poetry month, I’ll be sharing various poetry recommendations to help you read more poetry.

For this week, I wanted to share five American women poets that are considered classics from the last 100 years or so.

This is the last week of poetry month and me sharing poet recommendations. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series! Please let me know your thoughts in a comment below.

All five of the women poets mentioned below were born in the 1900’s, and unfortunately none of them are still with us today. Each of them are significant both for their literary contributions and their impact on society.

Five women poets

Here’s a list of five women poets who lived in the last 100 years or so:

  1. Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
  2. Sylvia Plath (1923-1963)
  3. Maya Angelou (1928-2014)
  4. Audre Lorde (1934-1992)
  5. Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

I’ve listed them in order of when they were born. Keep reading to find out more about each one.

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

  • 1917-2000
  • Won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1950
    • First African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize
  • Won the Robert Frost Medal for Lifetime Achievement in 1989

Gwendolyn Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. She is considered one of the most widely read and influential poets from American poetry in the 1900s.

Brooks started writing poetry young, and by 16 she had already written and published around 75 poems!

She born in the south, but was a lifelong resident of Chicago. Living in Chicago was a huge part of her life and greatly influenced her work.

Her work often centers around the lives of ordinary people, with characters commonly a reflection of her life in the inner city of Chicago. She also conveyed a political consciousness through her work, with reflections of the civil rights activism from the 1960’s onwards.

Over her life, she received many public recognitions of her work. In 1950, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book Annie Allen, which made her the first African American to ever receive a Pulitzer. She was also inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and became the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, being the first Black woman to achieve either of those.

Links:

Sylvia Plath (1923-1963)

  • 1932 – 1963
  • Credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry
  • Died by suicide when only 30 years old

Sylvia Plath is considered one of the most admired and dynamic 20th century poets. She’s best known for her semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar (1963), and her two published collections of poetry, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965).

When Plath was only 30 years old (1963), she died by suicide. She suffered from depression for most of her life and had tried several times to commit suicide. At the time of her death, she already had a significant following in the literary community and has since inspired countless readers and other poets.

In 1956, she married fellow poet Ted Hughes. Their relationship was tumultuous and Plath said he was abusive in her letters. They separated due to Hughes’ affair with another woman.

Horrifically, Plath died by suicide before their divorce was finalized and thus her entire estate and all her written work were inherited by Hughes. When Ariel was published after her death, Hughes changed the arrangement and selection of poems to be included from what Plath had already chosen. He has also admitted to destroying some of her journals and even lost (probably “lost”) another journal and an unfinished novel. He’s been repeatedly condemned for his censoring and controlling of her work.

Links:

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

  • 1928-2014
  • Died at the age of 86
  • Genre(s): Memoirs and poetry
  • Key books: I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings

She had a far reaching career, both as an entertainer (singer, dancer, actress, composer, and Hollywood’s first Black director), storyteller (writer, editor, essayist, playwright, and poet), civil rights activist (worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X), and educator (as a lifetime professorship at Wake Forest University).

Over her life she wrote 36 books, with her most famous being her series of memoirs. Her book I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings, the first in the series of seven memoirs, was incredibly well received and nominated for a National Book Award.

At Bill Clinton’s inauguration she recited her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” and you can see her inaugural poem recited here. This made her the first poet since Robert Frost (John F. Kennedy in 1961) to recite a poem at a presidential inauguration.

She has received so many medals and public recognition for her work that I’m sure I won’t do it justice, but here’s a short, selective list:

  • Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her book Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie
  • Tony Award for her role in the play Look Away
  • 3 Grammys for her spoken word albums
  • National Medal of Arts given by President Bill Clinton in 2000
  • Presidential Medal of Freedom given by President Barack Obama in 2010
  • Served on two presidential committees (Gerald Ford in 1975 & Jimmy Carter in 19977)

Videos of her performing her poetry

Links:

Audre Lorde (1934-1992)

  • 1934-1992
  • Died at the age of 58
  • Key books:
    Sister Outsider, The Black Unicorn
  • Key Essay:
    The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master’s House

Audre Lorde was a self described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” She includes all these aspects of her identity in how she described herself, because she focused a lot on intersectionality and how each area of her life contributed to her overall experience.

A lot of her efforts were related to social activism, working to confront and address various areas of injustice, including racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia, both through political activist work and as a thought leader. Her written work centered around feminism, lesbianism, illness and civil rights, all of it as an exploration of the black female identity.

She contributed significantly to feminist theory, critical race studies, and queer theory. Her iconic essay “The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master’s House” was an early discussion of the intersectionality of race, class, and gender.

Lorde was very vocal about her issues with the first world/white feminist movement and actively worked to confront race-related issues.

Links:

Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

  • 1935 – 2019
  • Won the National Book Award  and the Pulitzer Prize
  • Her work is inspired by nature

Mary Oliver is a well renown American poet. She was declared America’s best-selling poet in 2007. She also won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (for her 5th collection of poetry called American Primitive).

Most of her work focuses on themes of nature and the natural world. Oliver was influenced by both Whitman and Thoreau, as is seen in her clear and poignant discussions of nature. She’s also been compared to Emily Dickinson, as Oliver’s work leans toward solitude and inner thoughts, with a combination of dark introspection with joyous release.

Mary Oliver would often go for walks for inspiration and to help her writing. She rarely gave interviews and preferred for her work to speak for itself. But in a rare interview she said, “When things are going well, you know, the walk does not get rapid or get anywhere: I finally just stop, and write. That’s a successful walk!”

In the late 1950’s, Oliver met Molly Malone Cook, a photographer, and they became life long partners.

One quote that was all over the internet a while ago was:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

It’s from her poem The Summer Day (you can read it here), and it’s much more about strolling through nature and appreciating the little things than grand adventures.

Links:

Final thoughts

All these women are incredible and I encourage you to check out their work. All of them shaped the literary world and how we view the world.

Have you read any of these poets’ work?

I hope you’re learned something new and maybe discovered a new poet to read. Now that it’s the last week of Poetry month, what new poets did you discover this month?

Who would you add to this list of classic women poets?

I would love to hear your thoughts in a comment below

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Poetry is the way

This is a quote from Audre Lorde, from her essay called Poetry is not a Luxury.

Quote by Audre Lorde, “Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”

Have you read any of Audre Lorde’s essays? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

If you’re interested, you can read an excerpt from the same essay here.

The Selected Works of Audre Lorde – Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s “intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible” (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.

Self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems—selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.

Copyright © 1977 by Audre Lorde (for this essay).

You can find more details here on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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Poetry is not a luxury

Excerpt from Selected Works by Audre Lorde

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

This is an excerpt from the book Selected Words of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde, from the essay Poetry is Not a Luxury.

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are—until the poem—nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding.

As we learn to bear the intimacy of scrutiny and to flourish within it, as we learn to use the products of that scrutiny for power within our living, those fears which rule our lives and form our silences begin to lose their control over us.

For each of us as women, there is a dark place within, where hidden and growing our true spirit rises, “beautiful/and tough as chestnut/stanchions against (y)our nightmare of weakness/” and of impotence.

These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through that darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling. The women’s place of power within each of us is neither white nor surface; it is dark, it is ancient, and it is deep.

When we view living in the european mode only as a problem to be solved, we rely solely upon our ideas to make us free, for those were what the white fathers told us were precious.

But as we come more into touch with our own ancient, non-european consciousness of living as a situation to be experienced and interacted with, we learn more and more to cherish our feelings, and to respect those hidden sources of our power from where true knowledge and, therefore lasting action comes.

At this point in time, I believe that women carry within ourselves the possibility for fusion of these two approaches to necessary for survival, and we come closest to this combination in our poetry. I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word poetry to mean—in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight.

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.

As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas. They become a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action. Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of “it feels right to me.” We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. And where that language does not exist, it is our poetry which helps to fashion it. Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.

Possibility is neither forever nor instant. It is not easy to sustain belief in its efficacy. We can sometimes work long and hard to establish on beachhead of real resistance to the deaths we are expected to live, only to have that beachhead assaulted or threatened by those canards we have been socialized to fear, or by the withdrawal of those approvals that we have been warned to seek for safety. Women see ourselves diminished or softened by the falsely benign accusations of childishness, of nonuniversality, of changeability, of sensuality. And who asks the question: Am I altering your aura, your ideas, your dreams, or am I merely moving you to temporary and reactive action? And even though the latter is no mean task, it is one that must be seen within the context of a need for true alteration of the very foundations of our lives.

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom

Have you read this book or this essay by Audre Lorde? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

The Selected Works of Audre Lorde – Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s “intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible” (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.

Self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems—selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.

Copyright © 1977 by Audre Lorde (for this essay).

You can find more details here on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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I feel, therefore I can be free

This is a quote from the essay Poetry is Not a Luxury by Audre Lorde.

Quote by Audre Lorde, “I feel, therefore I can be free.”

Have you read this essay by Audre Lorde? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

If you’re interested, you can read an excerpt from the book here.

The Selected Works of Audre Lorde – Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s “intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible” (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers.

Self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one of the first to center the experiences of black, queer women. This essential reader showcases her indelible contributions to intersectional feminism, queer theory, and critical race studies in twelve landmark essays and more than sixty poems—selected and introduced by one of our most powerful contemporary voices on race and gender, Roxane Gay.

Copyright © 1977 by Audre Lorde (for this essay).

You can find more details here on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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When I dare to be powerful

This is a quote from the book The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde.

Quote by Audre Lorde, “When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less important whether or not I am unafraid.”

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

If you’re interested, you can read an excerpt from the book here.

The Cancer Journals – Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.

First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women’s pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women’s body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Poetic and profoundly feminist, Lorde’s testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action.

Copyright © 1980 by Audre Lorde.

More details can be found here on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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The love of women healed me

Excerpt from The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

Photo by Vonecia Carswell | Accessed on Unsplash.com

This is an excerpt from the book The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde.

And my friends, who flooded me with love and concern and appreciation and relief gave me so much energy that for those first 48 hours I really felt as if I was done with death and pain, and even loss, and that I had for some unknown reason been very very lucky. I was filled with a surety that everything was going to be all right, in just those indeterminate phrases. But it was downhill from there.

On the morning of the third day, the pain returned home bringing all of its kinfolk. Not that any single one of them was overwhelming, but just that all in concert, or even in small repertory groups, they were excruciating. There were constant ones and intermittent ones. There were short sharp and long dull and various combinations of the same ones. The muscles in my back and right should began to screech as if they’d been pulled apart and now were coming back to life slowly and against their will. My chest wall was beginning to ache and burn and stab by turns. My breast which was no longer there would hurt as if it were being squeezed in a vice. That was perhaps the worst pain of all, because it would come with a full complement of horror that I was to be forever reminded of my loss by suffering in a part of me which was no longer there. I suddenly seemed to get weaker rather than stronger. The euphoria and numbing effects of the anesthesia were beginning to subside.

My brain felt like grey mush—I hadn’t had to think much for the past two days. Just about the time that I started to feel the true quality of the uphill climb before me—of adjustment to a new body, a new time span, a possible early death—the pains hit. The pain grew steadily worse and I grew more and more furious because nobody had every talked about the physical pain. I had thought the emotional and psychological pain would be the worst, but it was the physical pain that seemed to be doing me in, or so I wrote at the time.

Feeling was returning to the traumatized area at the same time as I was gradually coming out of physical and emotional shock. my voices, those assorted pieces of myself that guided me between the operations were settling back into their melded quieter places, and a more and more conscious part of me was struggling for ascendancy, and not at all liking what she was finding/feeling.

In a way, therefore, the physical pain was power, for it kept that conscious part of me away from the full flavour of my fear and loss, consuming me, or rather wearing me down for the next two weeks. That two week period of time seems like an age to me now, because so many different changes passed through me. Actually the course of my psychic and physical convalescence moved quite quickly.

I do not know why. I do know that there was a tremendous amount of love and support flowing into me from the women around me, and it felt like being bathed in a continuous tide of positive energies, even when sometimes I wanted a bit of negative silence to complement the pain inside of me.

But support will always have a special and vividly erotic set of image/meanings for me now, one of which is floating upon a sea within a ring of women like warm bubbles keeping me afloat upon the surface of that sea. I can feel the texture of inviting water just beneath their eyes, and do not fear it. It is the sweet smell of their breath and laughter and voices calling my name that gives me volition, helps me remember I want to turn away from looking down. These images flow quickly, the tangible floods of energy rolling off these women towards me that I converted into power to heal myself.

There is so much false spirituality around us these days, calling itself goddess-worship or “the way.” It is false because too cheaply bought and little understood, but most of all because it does not lend, but rather saps, that energy we need to do our work. So when an example of the real power of healing love comes along such as this one, it is difficult to use the same words to talk about it because so many of our best and most erotic words have been so cheapened.

Perhaps I can say this all more simply; I say the love of women healed me.

Have you read this book? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below!

The Cancer Journals – Summary

Here is the book summary from Goodreads:

Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy.

First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer and mastectomy. Long before narratives explored the silences around illness and women’s pain, Lorde questioned the rules of conformity for women’s body images and supported the need to confront physical loss not hidden by prosthesis. Living as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Lorde heals and re-envisions herself on her own terms and offers her voice, grief, resistance, and courage to those dealing with their own diagnosis. Poetic and profoundly feminist, Lorde’s testament gives visibility and strength to women with cancer to define themselves, and to transform their silence into language and action.

Copyright © 1980 by Audre Lorde.

More details can be found here on Goodreads and on StoryGraph.

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