Audre Lorde was a black writer, feminist, womanist, lesbian, and civil rights activist. She dedicated her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing the injustices of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Her work rings with passion and a burning climax to see things turn around and equality established.
Her poems and prose largely dealt with issues related to civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity.
Audre Lorde’s words and work will push your depth to manifestation. Her burning vision to crush injustice, racism and discrimination is a light for the time we are currently in. She embodies spirited work, excellence and creativity. We are currently reading her work, ‘Sister Outsider’ and her depth is so amazing and unraveling!
We pooled together a couple of quotes from her that’ll ignite your heart and launch your mind to create more.
“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.”
“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk through the rain.”
“I will become strong, the best, excel in everything, become the very best because I don’t dare to be anything else.” — “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” Sister Outsider
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.”
“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.”
“Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”
“You cannot, you cannot use someone else’s fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.”
“When I live through pain without recognizing it, self-consciously, I rob myself of the power that can come from using that pain, the power to fuel some movement beyond it. I condemn myself to reliving that pain over and over and over whenever something close triggers it. And that is suffering, a seemingly inescapable cycle.”
“Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.”
“To acknowledge privilege is the first step in making it available for wider use. Each of us is blessed in some particular way, whether we recognize our blessings or not. And each one of us, somewhere in our lives, must clear a space within that blessing where she can call upon whatever resources are available to her in the name of something that must be done.”
Audre Lorde’s works include:
A Burst Of Light
The Black Unicorn
Between Ourselves
Cables To Rage
The Cancer Journals
The First Cities
From A Land Where Other People Live
I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities
Lesbian Party: An Anthology
Need: A Chorale For Black Women Voices
The New York Head Shop And Museum
Our Dead Behind Us: Poems
Sister Outsider: Essays And Speeches
The Marvelous Arithmetics Of Distance: Poems
Undersong: Chosen Poems Old And New
Uses Of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power
Woman Poet—The East
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Resources, Quotes and Information from Sister Outsider, Poetry Foundation, Good Reads, and The Audre Lord Project.