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Audre Lorde Sister Outsider ("White fathers distorted the word poetry…
Audre Lorde
Sister Outsider
"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" (Transformation, 44)
by comparing afraid to being tired, shows an adaptability. We know how tired feels, we can do the same thing with fear.
rallying cry for women, and use our differences, paying attention to the intersections
"Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, wether or not we speak" (Transformation, 42)--structural oppression and violence.
"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised of misunderstood" (40). Yo, if we're all going to die afraid anyway, let's SPEAK anyway
"I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you." (41). use of mortality to set into light the violence of patriachal standards of being well behaved.
"White fathers distorted the word
poetry
to mean--in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight" (37). A call for poetry as ngiving language to dreams, a deep emotional life. Call for survival since "poetry" is the way we give language to new possibilities
"If we need to dream to move our spirits most deeply and directly toward and through promise" (39) poetry is how we enact and invite action towards liberation/freedom
"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" (38) prioritize feeling and erotics/senstations
"feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men" (39). using images of subordination; "thought" is seen as credible (also masculine?) --this is about recovering emotions as sites of knowledge "Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare" (39):
poetry as...new language outside of western, white european language (reason, rationality, education standards)
Poetry: feelings
The Uses of the Erotic
"the erotic is a source of power that has the ability to create true change" (
psychic and emotional feeling/health
"open and fearless underlining of my capacity to feel joy" (56): being in touch with one's joy/pleasures constantly.
What's the erotic? What if it isn't solely about sex?
definitely not porn: "confusing with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the supression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes the sensation without the feeling" (54)--porn is really shallow. We have confused the erotic with it's negative. What if we had "true feeling"
jobs as demeaning and brutal things we need, not emotionally/erotically satisfying (55: the principal horror);
defines the good in terms of profit: how are we thinking of 'good' jobs
The uses of Lorde: is part of the value the challenge/hard work? If Moraga and Anzandua call us to unlearn certain things and recognize other perspectives, then the value is reading!