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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
”I didn’t know how I was going to bring my personal and political visions together, but I knew it had to be possible because I felt them both too strongly, and knew how much I needed them both to survive. I did not agree with Rhea and her progressive friends when they said that this was not what the revolution was about. Any world which did not have a place of me loving women was not a world in which I wanted to live, nor one which I could fight for.”
This book was simply incredible. There were so many layers of actual perfection to this entire work that I couldn’t even begin to touch on every detail that shone like a lighthouse beacon into every corner of my life—past, present, and future.
First of all, the writing was astonishingly, boneshakingly beautiful. The book is a memoir but it reads very much like literary fiction (probably why Lorde described it as a “biomythography”). I have actually never read a book as beautifully written as this one with so much genuine feeling, passion, vulnerability, and love—and hope! This book is *dripping* with hope and wow. So powerful and so beautiful.
There are a ton of important and impactful themes covered from Blackness to queerness, New York City in the mid-19th c., expat life in Mexico City during McCarthyism, the “progressive” revolution, and just Life in all of its general beauty and horribleness. She also spends a lot of time describing food and fashion which I thought added a layer of tangible reality that made my experience of her writing even that much more visceral.
There is just so much power and relevance in every sentence I have already found myself repeating my favorite quotes to myself as I think of them throughout the day in response to various memories and experiences. I could have read a thousand more pages of this book! Obviously going to be collecting more of her work.
“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 person I became in that trying.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Alcoholism, Animal death, Infidelity, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Blood and Racism
Be aware that the abortion scene is *extremely* graphic.questingnotcoasting's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
I read a couple of essays by Audre Lorde last year and immediately knew I wanted read more of her work. This was brilliant and I can see why it's such a beloved classic. The language is beautiful and there's a quality about it which felt like fiction, hence the term biomythography. I also found it fascinating reading about New York in the 1930s to 1950s because it's a period I didn't know much about.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Abortion, Racism, Suicide, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Animal death, Child abuse, and Sexual assault
nibs's review against another edition
emotional
slow-paced
4.0
The autobiography of Audre Lorde, following her growing up and as a young adult, becoming herself. Going into this, I thought it would follow a greater period of time in her life, but the depth in which is explored her relationship with herself, her friends and her lovers was really good.
Reading this, I realised that I knew so little of the history and stories of gay women. Through growing up Black during segregation, to growing into one of the few Black gay-girls, Lorde's differences and needing to fight to survive is an ever-present part of the book. Learning the ins and outs of gay-girl culture in New York in the 1950s and how race fits into that (spoiler: it doesn't. race was erased), was so insightful, especially with the queer history often being dominated by white cis men.
The most captivating part for me was reading about when she went to Mexico and felt visible for the first time in her life. Being seen in public as a person, and no longer looking at the ground while walking around .
There are some parts of this which are a bit unreliable, in terms of facts and dates, which I guess is how it is a memoir. It is hard to remember all the exact details. A couple of those details threw me off, and I had to go back and check, but it was fine in the end. For example, It says the kittens died from drinking turpentine as she and Muriel's relationship was falling apart, but then after they broke up and when she was going over to Kitty's place, she was thinking about whether the kittens would be fed .
Reading this, I realised that I knew so little of the history and stories of gay women. Through growing up Black during segregation, to growing into one of the few Black gay-girls, Lorde's differences and needing to fight to survive is an ever-present part of the book. Learning the ins and outs of gay-girl culture in New York in the 1950s and how race fits into that (spoiler: it doesn't. race was erased), was so insightful, especially with the queer history often being dominated by white cis men.
The most captivating part for me was reading about when she went to Mexico
There are some parts of this which are a bit unreliable, in terms of facts and dates, which I guess is how it is a memoir. It is hard to remember all the exact details. A couple of those details threw me off, and I had to go back and check, but it was fine in the end. For example,
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content, Suicide, Rape, and Self harm
Minor: Animal death
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