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8cdc6ee
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It is as hard for our children to believe that we are not omnipotent as it is for us to know it, as parents. But that knowledge is necessary as the first step in the reassessment of power as something other than might, age, privilege, or the lack of fear. It is an important step for a boy, whose societal destruction begins when he is forced to believe that he can only be strong if he doesn't feel, or if he wins.
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parenting
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Audre Lorde |
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cc77cab
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As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody's comfortable prejudices of who I should be.
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prejudice
intersectionality
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Audre Lorde |
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fd1174f
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It's difficult to talk about double messages without having a twin tongue.
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Audre Lorde |
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2df7a1a
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Love is a word, another kind of open. As the diamond comes into a knot of flame I am Black because I come from the earth's inside take my word for jewel in the open light.
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feminist
black-poet
essayist
ny-laureate
teacher
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Audre Lorde |
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f1fa518
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One thing has always kept me going--and it's not really courage or bravery, unless that's what courage or bravery is made of--is that sense that there are so many ways in which I'm vulnerable and cannot help but be vulnerable, I'm not going to be more vulnerable by putting weapons of silence in my enemies' hands. Being an open lesbian in the Black community is not easy, although being closeted is even harder.
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Audre Lorde |
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77bdfe9
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Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust.
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Audre Lorde |
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bc6630c
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Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea.
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feminism
power-joy
sister-outsider
self
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Audre Lorde |
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a25af6f
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I have died too many deaths that were not mine.
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poetry
not-mine
sequelae
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Audre Lorde |
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7821b82
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DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem.
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free
inspirational
big
judgmental
judging
real
afro-hair
natural
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Audre Lorde |
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c8fd56c
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The breakdown of mummies and daddies was an important part of lesbian relationships in the Bagatelle...For some of us, however, role-playing reflected all the depreciating attitudes toward women which we loathed in straight society. It was the rejection of these roles that had drawn us to 'the life' in the first place. Instinctively, without particular theory or political position or dialectic, we recognized oppression as oppression, no mat..
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stereotypes
homosexuality
gender
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Audre Lorde |
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715d91d
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each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible.
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Audre Lorde |
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bb31f8f
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Raising Black children -- female and male -- in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive.
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racism
self-protection
sexism
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Audre Lorde |
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e814e4f
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The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.
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feminism
strength
difference
patriarchy
failure
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Audre Lorde |
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f9e2fef
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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.
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Audre Lorde |
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ac5ef34
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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.
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Audre Lorde |
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0927cdd
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When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn't matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.
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Audre Lorde |
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0082382
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There is a distinction I am beginning to make in my living between pain and suffering. Pain is an event, an experience that must be recognized, named and then used in some way in order for the experience to change, to be transformed into something else, strength or knowledge or action. Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain. When I live through pain without recognizing it self-consci..
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racism
pain
suffering
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Audre Lorde |
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228e8e7
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We have the power those who came before us have given us, to move beyond the place where they were standing. We have the trees, and water, and sun, and our children. Malcolm X does not live in the dry texts of his words as we read them; he lives in the energy we generate and use to move along the visions we share with him. We are making the future as well as bonding to survive the enormous pressures of the present, and that is what it means..
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feminism
malcolm-x
race
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Audre Lorde |
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5a4615e
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There is no Black person here who can afford to wait to be led into positive action for survival. Each one of us must look clearly and closely at the genuine particulars (conditions) of his or her life and decide where action and energy is needed and where it can be effective. Change is the immediate responsibility of each of us, wherever and however we are standing, in whatever arena we choose. For while we wait for another Malcolm, anothe..
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Audre Lorde |
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ce1a524
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What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?
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Audre Lorde |
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0ec029d
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The move to render the presence of lesbians and gay men invisible in the intricate fabric of Black existence and survival is a move which contributes to fragmentation and weakness in the Black community.
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Audre Lorde |
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9817c70
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Black Lesbians are not a threat to the Black family. Many of us have families of our own. We are not white, and we are not a disease. We are women who love women. This does not mean we are going to assault your daughters in an alley on Nostrand Avenue. It does not mean we only think about sex, any more than you only think about sex. Even if you believe any of these stereotypes about Black Lesbians, begin to practice like you don't belie..
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Audre Lorde |
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e310f11
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your smile has been to war
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Audre Lorde |
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77669c6
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Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference -- those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older -- know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to d..
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Audre Lorde |
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54ef671
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We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired.
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work
speaking-out
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Audre Lorde |
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e5170a7
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All of our children are prey. How do we raise them not to prey upon themselves and each other? And this is why we cannot be silent, because our silences will come to testify against us out of the mouths of our children.
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Audre Lorde |
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e18e788
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Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and pai..
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Audre Lorde |
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5eeabb7
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I want to write rage but all that comes is sadness. We have been sad long enough to make this earth either weep or grow fertile. I am an anachronism, a sport, like the bee that was never meant to fly. Science said so. I am not supposed to exist. I carry death around in my body like a condemnation. But I do live. The bee flies. There must be some way to integrate death into living, neither ignoring it nor giving in to it.
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Audre Lorde |
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3c2e368
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Hatred is the fury of those who do not share our goals, and its object is death and destruction. Anger is a grief of distortions between peers, and its object is change.
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Audre Lorde |
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5403932
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No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman.
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patriarchy
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Audre Lorde |
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4d4f0aa
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In a paradoxical sense, once I accepted my position as different from the larger society as well as from any single-sub-society--black or gay--I felt I didn't have to try so hard. To be accepted. To look femme. To be straight. To look straight. To be proper. To look "nice". To be liked. To be loved. To be approved. What I didn't realize was how much harder I had to try merely to stay alive, or rather, to stay human. How much stronger a pers..
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queerness
self-realization
sexuality
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Audre Lorde |
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56db032
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Sadomasochism is an institutionalized celebration of dominant/subordinate relationships. And it prepares us either to accept subordination or to enforce dominance. , to affirm that the exertion of power over powerlessness is erotic, empowering, is to set the emotional and social stage for the continuation of that relationship, politically, socially, and economically. Sadomasochism feeds the belief that domination is inevitable and legitima..
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Audre Lorde |
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ffcc2ab
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Survival is the greatest gift of love
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Audre Lorde |
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1e19b4b
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young seeds that have not seen sun forget and drown easily.
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Audre Lorde |
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7bc4305
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I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else's blood.
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Audre Lorde |
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2d6895f
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Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows "that is not me." In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we..
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Audre Lorde |
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30020a6
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In the 60s, political correctness became not a guideline for living, but a new set of shackles. A small and vocal part of the Black community lost sight of the fact that unity does not mean unanimity--Black people are not some standardly digestible quantity. In order to work together we do not have to become a mix of indistinguishable particles resembling a vat of homogenized chocolate milk.
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Audre Lorde |
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7b461ba
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Always in the middle of our bloodiest battles you lay down your arms like flowering mines to conqueror me home.
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Audre Lorde |
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c19c0ac
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Yet anger, like guilt, is an incomplete form of human knowledge. More useful than hatred, but still limited. Anger is useful to help clarify our differences, but in the long run, strength that is bred by anger alone is a blind force which cannot create the future. It can only demolish the past. Such strength does not focus upon what lies ahead, but upon what lies behind, upon what created it -- hatred. And hatred is a deathwish for the hate..
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Audre Lorde |
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3f7e3f6
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If this society ascribes roles to Black men which they are not allowed to fulfill, is it Black women who must bend and alter our lives to compensate, or is it society that needs changing?
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racism
social-change
society
|
Audre Lorde |
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968a0bd
|
It was hard but very strengthening to remember that I could silent my whole life long and then be dead, flat out, and never have said or done what I wanted to do, what I needed to do, because of fear of pain, fear...If I waited to be right before I spoke, I would be sending little cryptic messages on the Ouija board, complaints from the other side.
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Audre Lorde |
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2bf5d57
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Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity.
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privilegel
|
Audre Lorde |
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823bc62
|
We have been sad long enough to make this earth either weep or grow fertile.
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Audre Lorde |
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4e7f672
|
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am myself -- a Black woman warrior poet doing my work -- come to ask you, are you doing yours?
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Audre Lorde |