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4 Poems and Texts That Commemorate the Life of Audre Lorde

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February 18th would have been Audre Lorde’s 88th birthday. Her words as a poet, essayist, feminist, and academic have outlived her, though often stripped of their original, radical context. 

Lorde was the first to speak of self-care – not as indulgent consumption but rather an “act of political warfare” as a Black woman, lesbian, and mother struggling against the cancer that would prematurely take her life (Refinery29). 

And though many remember her warning that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” few recall that the house in question was the racial capitalism left unquestioned by the white feminist movement

Today, groups like the Audre Lorde Project in New York continue her efforts to center and empower working-class queer people and women of color in creating “revolutionary changes” and “new paths to our survival” (Sister Outsider, 123). We’ve included some of Lorde’s texts below.  Her work should be understood as completely and contextually as possible, just like our struggles against oppression must grapple with the complexities of difference and the framework of intersecting oppressions. 

Power

…Today that 37 year old white man

with 13 years of police forcing

was set free

by eleven white men who said they were satisfied

justice had been done

and one Black Woman who said

“They convinced me” meaning

they had dragged her 4’10” black Woman’s frame

over the hot coals

of four centuries of white male approval

until she let go

the first real power she ever had

and lined her own womb with cement

to make a graveyard for our children…


Who Said It Was Simple

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.


A Litany for Survival

…For those of us

who were imprinted with fear

like a faint line in the center of our foreheads

learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk

for by this weapon

this illusion of some safety to be found

the heavy-footed hoped to silence us

For all of us

this instant and this triumph

We were never meant to survive…

So it is better to speak

remembering

we were never meant to survive.


The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (pg. 110)

“It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians… for the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.

“Poor women and women of Color know there is a difference between the daily manifestations of marital slavery and prostitution because it is our daughters who line 42nd Street. If white american feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?

“In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action.”

2400 1600 Andrew Lee

Andrew Lee

Andrew Lee is a writer and organizer plotting a better world in Philadelphia. His work has previously appeared in Notes From Below, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, Plan A Magazine, ROAR Magazine, and Teen Vogue.

All stories by : Andrew Lee
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