AUDRE LORDE
About Audre Lorde
Audre Geraldine Lorde was born in Harlem, New York on February 18, 1934. Lorde was a Black lesbian, feminist, poet, mother, warrior, and sister outsider. Throughout her life, Lorde made significant contributions to the Black Lesbian and Feminist movement; her poems inspired many to become empowered and activists/advocates for social justice. The term 'sister outsider' illustrates the ways in which Lorde reclaimed and transformed overlapping, discredited, and marginalized identities-black, lesbian, feminist-- into a powerful, radical, and progressive standpoint. Andre Lorde's poems were politicized and her anger did not confine itself to only racial justice but also extended to feminist issues as well. Lorde fought the marginalization of such identities of “lesbian” and “black woman,” thereby empowering her readers to react to the prejudice in their own lives.
Exclusion in the feminist movement
Intersectionality theory is the conceptualization of markers of idenitity such as: race, class, and gender and how they simultanesouly work together as dynamic power relations that influence identity and experiences. Different categories of identity such as gender takes on it's meaning in relation to another category such as race. "Women of color who were involved in the progressive movements of the 1960's and 1970's pointed to the ways they experienced multiple oppressions simultaneously, contrary to the experiences of white women and men of color, for whom race or gender was often their primary and only concern" (Alimohed, 2003, p. 152).
An American Disease in Blackface-Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde made significant contributions to the Black feminist movement; in an autobiographical essay she proclaims that Black feminism is NOT white feminism in blackface. This essay was intricate because it highlights important issues within the Black community such as homophobia and traditional sexism. "The results of women hating in the Black community are tragedies which diminish all Black people. These acts must be seen in the context of of systemic devaluation of Black women within this society" (Byrd and Cole, 2009, p. 49).
Outsiders within
Black and Latina women offer a distinct angle of vision as outsiders within the LGBTQ movement and within their own racial/ethnic communities. Their queerness negates their full inclusion within their own racial/ethnic community due to Homophobia. Moreover, racism within the LGBTQ movement marginalizes their experiences and perpetually leaves them as outsiders. This knowledge produces resistance to normative conceptions of what it means to be queer and a women of color (Alimahomed, 2009).
Who said it was easy?
There are so many roots to the tree of anger
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex
and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.
that sometimes the branches shatter
before they bear.
Sitting in Nedicks
the women rally before they march
discussing the problematic girls
they hire to make them free.
An almost white counterman passes
a waiting brother to serve them first
and the ladies neither notice nor reject
the slighter pleasures of their slavery.
But I who am bound by my mirror
as well as my bed
see causes in colour
as well as sex
and sit here wondering
which me will survive
all these liberations.