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4.59 AVERAGE
4.59 AVERAGE
This is one of the most well written, powerful collections I've read in a while. She has such a melodic rhythm and beautiful way with words.
what is there to say that hasn’t already been said? Sister Outsider is a seminal work of feminist literature and I wish I’d read it sooner
emotional
informative
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
reflective
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
I think this is one of the most important books on Black, queer feminism one can ever read.
This is a collection of essays and speeches by Audre Lorde originally published in 1984. The collection starts with "Notes From a Trip to Russia", which is an interesting read. Lorde isn't naive enough to take everything she sees as the truth. She asks herself - and her hosts - questions. The rest is a collection is mainly about her views on the (then) political situation and how to deal with it. Most famously "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House."
She uses her personal experiences to make political points - about the different experiences of the world that Black and white women have and how that affects what feminism is and how it campaigns. Some of this has a real contemporary resonance:
"You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying."
She also makes strong points about how oppressors use these different experiences to prevent change. They pit white against black, straight against gay etc:
"It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
She talks about the importance of speaking up and the importance of anger.
It's a finely written, tightly argued polemic that I am almost certainly not doing justice to. I suspect I was not the audience for whom Lorde was writing these essays and she is quite scathing about having to justify her existence and experiences to people. Although some of the language and emphasis is of its time a lot of it - sadly - could be written now. I mean if the following doesn't sound bells of the hear and nowness then you have temporal-cultural deafness:
"Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns."
Read it. Partly it will depress you because of all the battles that are still being fought, partly because it will provide you with quotes that you can use as weapons and partly because we all need intelligent fuel to fire us up to take on the ongoing cultural wars.
She uses her personal experiences to make political points - about the different experiences of the world that Black and white women have and how that affects what feminism is and how it campaigns. Some of this has a real contemporary resonance:
"You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying."
She also makes strong points about how oppressors use these different experiences to prevent change. They pit white against black, straight against gay etc:
"It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house."
She talks about the importance of speaking up and the importance of anger.
It's a finely written, tightly argued polemic that I am almost certainly not doing justice to. I suspect I was not the audience for whom Lorde was writing these essays and she is quite scathing about having to justify her existence and experiences to people. Although some of the language and emphasis is of its time a lot of it - sadly - could be written now. I mean if the following doesn't sound bells of the hear and nowness then you have temporal-cultural deafness:
"Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns."
Read it. Partly it will depress you because of all the battles that are still being fought, partly because it will provide you with quotes that you can use as weapons and partly because we all need intelligent fuel to fire us up to take on the ongoing cultural wars.
What can I say about Audrey Lorde. She is amazing and poignant, as important today as in the 80’s. Read it. You will be a better person for it.