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How A Diamond Comes Into A Knot Of Flame How A Sound Comes Into A Word, Coloured By Who Pays What For Speaking. Some Words Are Open. Love Is A Word Another Kind Of Open — As A Diamond Comes Into A Knot Of Flame I Am Black Because I Come From The Earth's Inside. Take My Word For Jewel In Your Open Light.

-Audre Lorde

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How A Diamond Comes

Audre Lorde

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How A Diamond Comes Into A Knot Of Flame How A Sound Comes Into A Word, Coloured By Who Pays What For Speaking. Some Words Are Open. Love Is A Word Another Kind Of Open — As A Diamond Comes Into A Knot Of Flame I Am Black Because I Come From The Earth's Inside. Take My Word For Jewel In Your Open Light.

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The Transformation Of Silence Into Language And Action Is An Act Of Self-revelation .

There Are Many Lesbians And Gay Men Trapped By Their Fear Into Silence And Invisibility, And They Exist In A Dim Valley Of Terror Wearing Nooses Of Conformity.

Hatred Is A Death Wish For The Hated, Not A Life Wish For Anything Else.

I Remember How Being Young And Black And Gay And Lonely Felt. A Lot Of It Was Fine, Feeling I Had The Truth And The Light And The Key, But A Lot Of It Was Purely Hell.

As We Come To Know, Accept, And Explore Our Feelings, They Will Become Sanctuaries And Fortresses And Spawning Grounds For The Most Radical And Daring Of Ideas-the House Of Difference So Necessary To Change And The Conceptualization Of Any Meaningful Action.

It Is Never Easy To Demand The Most From Ourselves, From Our Lives, From Our Work. To Encourage Excellence Is To Go Beyond The Encouraged Mediocrity Of Our Society Is To Encourage Excellence. But Giving In To The Fear Of Feeling And Working To Capacity Is A Luxury Only The Unintentional Can Afford, And The Unintentional Are Those Who Do Not Wish To Guide Their Own Destinies.

To That Piece In Each Of Us That Refuses To Be Silent.

It's Possible To Take That As A Personal Metaphor And Then Multiply It To A People, A Race, A Sex, A Time. If We Can Keep This Thing Going Long Enough, If We Can Survive And Teach What We Know, We'll Make It.

Women On Trains Have A Life That Is Exactly Livable The Precision Of Days Flashing Past

We Must Wake Up Knowing We Have Work To Do And Go To Bed Knowing We've Done It.

Even The Smallest Victory Is Never To Be Taken For Granted. Each Victory Must Be Applauded.

Difference Is That Raw And Powerful Connection From Which Our Personal Power Is Forged... We Have Been Taught To Either Ignore Our Differences Or To View Them As Causes For Separation And Suspicion Rather Than As Forces For Change. Without Community, There Is No Liberation, Only The Most Vulnerable And Temporary Armistice Between An Individual And Her Oppression... Survival Is Learning To Take Our Difference And Make Them Strengths.

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 Or Misunderstood. That The Speaking Profits Me, Beyond Any Other Effect....what I Most Regretted Were My Silences. Of What Had I Ever Been Afraid? ...death On The Other Hand, Is The Final Silence...my Silences Had Not Protected Me. Your Silences Will Not Protect You.

Tomorrow Belongs To Those Of Us Who Conceive Of It As Belonging To Everyone; Who Lend The Best Of Ourselves To It, And With Joy.

In Other Words, I Would Be Giving In To A Myth Of Sameness Which I Think Can Destroy Us.

In Our Work And In Our Living, We Must Recognize That Difference Is A Reason For Celebration And Growth, Rather Than A Reason For Destruction.

And This Is A Grave Responsibility, Projected From Within Each Of Us, Not To Settle For The Convenient, The Shoddy, The Conventionally Expected, Nor The Merely Safe.

Raising Black Children-female And Male-in The Mouth Of A Racist, Sexist, Suicidal Dragon Is Perilous And Chancy. If They Cannot Love And Resist At The Same Time, They Will Probably Not Survive.

Silence And Invisibility Go Hand In Hand With Powerlessness.

The Fear Of Death Is That You Are Dying Too Soon. Nobody Wants To, But At The Point That You Die You Can Pray That You Are No Longer The Same Person. I Pray That When I Am About To Die I Will Not Be The Same Person That I Am Now.

We Must Recognize And Nurture The Creative Parts Of Each Other Without Always Understanding What Will Be Created.

Sometimes We Drug Ourselves With Dreams Of New Ideasl The Head Will Save Us. The Brain Alone Will Set Us Free. But There Are No New Ideas Waiting In The Wings To Save Us As Women, As Human. There Are Only Old And Forgotten Ones, New Combinations, Extrapolations And Recognitions From Within Ourselves--along With The Renewed Courage To Try Them Out.

Revolution Is Not A One Time Event.

There's Always Someone Asking You To Underline One Piece Of Yourself - Whether It's Black, Woman, Mother, Dyke, Teacher, Etc. - Because That's The Piece That They Need To Key In To. They Want To Dismiss Everything Else.

Guilt Is Not A Response To Anger; It Is A Response To One’s Own Actions Or Lack Of Action. If It Leads To Change Then It Can Be Useful, Since It Is Then No Longer Guilt But The Beginning Of Knowledge. Yet All Too Often, Guilt Is Just Another Name For Impotence, For Defensiveness Destructive Of Communication; It Becomes A Device To Protect Ignorance And The Continuation Of Things The Way They Are, The Ultimate Protection For Changelessness.

I Am A Black Feminist. I Mean I Recognize That My Power As Well As My Primary Oppressions Come As A Result Of My Blackness As Well As My Womaness, And Therefore My Struggles On Both Of These Fronts Are Inseparable.

Part Of The Lesbian Consciousness Is An Absolute Recognition Of The Erotic Within Our Lives And, Taking That A Step Further, Dealing With The Erotic Not Only In Sexual Terms.

Caring For Myself Is Not Self-indulgence, It Is Self-preservation, And That Is An Act Of Political Warfare.

African Tradition Deals With Life As An Experience To Be Lived. In Many Respects, It Is Much Like The Eastern Philosophies In That We See Ourselves As A Part Of A Life Force; We Are Joined, For Instance, To The Air, To The Earth. We Are Part Of The Whole-life Process. We Live In Accordance With, In A Kind Of Correspondence With The Rest Of The World As A Whole. And Therefore Living Becomes An Experience, Rather Than A Problem, No Matter How Bad Or How Painful It May Be.

And When The Sun Rises We Are Afraid It Might Not Remain When The Sun Sets We Are Afraid It Might Not Rise In The Morning When Our Stomachs Are Full We Are Afraid Of Indigestion When Our Stomachs Are Empty We Are Afraid We May Never Eat Again When We Are Loved We Are Afraid Love Will Vanish When We Are Alone We Are Afraid Love Will Never Return And When We Speak We Are Afraid Our Words Will Not Be Heard Nor Welcomed But When We Are Silent We Are Still Afraid So It Is Better To Speak Remembering We Were Never Meant To Survive

Black Women Sharing Close Ties With Each Other, Politically Or Emotionally, Are Not The Enemies Of Black Men.

Each Time You Love, Love As Deeply As If It Were Forever.

When I Hear The Deepest Truths I Speak Coming Out Of My Mouth Sounding Like My Mother's, Even Remembering How I Fought Against Her, I Have To Reassess Both Our Relationship As Well As The Sources Of My Knowing.

Who I Am Is What Fulfills Me And Fulfills The Vision I Have Of The World.

What Are The Words You Do Not Yet Have? What Do You Need To Say? What Are The Tyrannies You Swallow Day By Day And Attempt To Make Your Own, Until You Will Sicken And Die Of Them, Still In Silence.

It Is Not The Destiny Of Black America To Repeat White America's Mistakes. But We Will, If We Mistake The Trappings Of Success In A Sick Society For The Signs Of A Meaningful Life.

I Have No Creative Use For Guilt, Yours Or My Own. Guilt Is Only Another Way Of Avoiding Informed Action, Of Buying Time Out Of The Pressing Need To Make Clear Choices, Out Of The Approaching Storm That Can Feed The Earth As Well As Bend The Trees.

What You Hear In My Voice Is Fury, Not Suffering. Anger, Not Moral Authority

I Am Very, Very Happy For Alice Walker.

[speaking] Is Never Without Fear; Of Visibility, Of The Harsh Light Of Scrutiny And Perhaps Judgment, Of Pain, Of Death. But We Have Lived Through All Of Those Already, In Silence, Except Death. And I Remind Myself All The Time Now, That If I Were To Have Been Born Mute, And Had Maintained An Oath Of Silence My Whole Life For Safety, I Would Still Have Suffered, And I Would Still Die.

Sadomasochism Is An Institutionalized Celebration Of Dominant/subordinate Relationships. And, It Prepares Us Either To Accept Subordination Or To Enforce Dominance. Even In Play, To Affirm That The Exertion Of Power Over Powerlessness Is Erotic, Is Empowering, Is To Set The Emotional And Social Stage For The Continuation Of That Relationship, Politically, Socially, And Economically.

Whenever A Conscious Black Woman Raises Her Voice On Issues Central To Her Existence, Somebody Is Going To Call Her Strident, Because They Don't Want To Hear About It, Nor Us. I Refuse To Be Silenced And I Refuse To Be Trivialized, Even If I Do Not Say What I Have To Say Perfectly.

When We Speak We Are Afraid Our Words Will Not Be Heard Or Welcomed. But When We Are Silent, We Are Still Afraid. So It Is Better To Speak.

If You Come As Softly As Wind Within The Trees You May Hear What I Hear See What Sorrow Sees. If You Come As Lightly As Threading Dew I Will Take You Gladly Nor Ask More Of You. You May Sit Beside Me Silent As A Breath Only Those Who Stay Dead Shall Remember Death. And If You Come I Will Be Silent Nor Speak Harsh Words To You. I Will Not Ask You Why, Now. Or How, Or What You Do. We Shall Sit Here, Softly Beneath Two Different Years And The Rich Earth Between Us Shall Drink Our Tears.

I Learned So Much From Listening To People. And All I Knew Was, The Only Thing I Had Was Honesty And Openness.

Guilt Is Not A Response To Anger; It Is A Response To One's Own Actions Or Lack Of Action.

Without Community, There Is No Liberation...but Community Must Not Mean A Shedding Of Our Differences, Nor The Pathetic Pretense That These Differences Do Not Exist.

The Erotic Is A Measure Between The Beginnings Of Our Sense Of Self And The Chaos Of Our Strongest Feelings.

Black Writers, Of Whatever Quality, Who Step Outside The Pale Of What Black Writers Are Supposed To Write About, Or Who Black Writers Are Supposed To Be, Are Condemned To Silences In Black Literary Circles That Are As Total And As Destructive As Any Imposed By Racism.

I Am Not Free While Any Woman Is Unfree, Even When Her Shackles Are Very Different From My Own.

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 Throught The Rain.

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House.

Every Woman I Have Ever Loved Has Left Her Print Upon Me, Where I Loved Some Invaluable Piece Of Myself Apart From Me-so Different That I Had To Stretch And Grow In Order To Recognize Her. And In That Growing, We Came To Separation, That Place Where Work Begins.

Pain Is An Event ... Suffering, On The Other Hand, Is The Nightmare Reliving Of Unscrutinized And Unmetabolized Pain.

If You Do Not Learn To Hate You Will Never Be Lonely Enough To Love Easily Nor Will You Always Be Brave, Although It Does Not Grow Any Easier. Do Not Pretend To Convenient Beliefs, Even When They Are Righteous; You Will Never Be Able To Defend Your City While Shouting.

I Am Deliberate And Afraid Of Nothing.

Nothing I Accept About Myself Can Be Used Against Me To Diminish Me.

I Agreed To Take Part In A New York University Institute For Humanities Conference A Year Ago. . . .

Heterosexuality Is

The Absence Of Any Consideration Of Lesbian Consciousness Or The Consciousness Of Third World Women Leaves A Serious Gap Within This Conference. . . .

Heterosexuality Is

If I Cannot Air This Pain And Alter It, I Will Surely Die Of It. That's The Beginning Of Social Protest.

If Our History Has Taught Us Anything, It Is That Action For Change Directed Against The External Conditions Of Our Oppressions Is Not Enough.

I Believe One Of The Hardest Things You Can Do Is Conquer Your Fears, But If You Have A Goal, Then It's Your Job To Open Up And Let It Be Real No Matter How Scary It Seems.

. . . It Is Through Poetry That We Give Name To Those Ideas Which Are-until The Poem-nameless And Formless, About To Be Birthed, But Already Felt.

My Fullest Concentration Of Energy Is Available To Me Only When I Integrate All The Parts Of Who I Am, Openly, Allowing Power From Particular Sources Of My Living To Flow Back And Forth Freely Through All My Different Selves, Without The Restriction Of Externally Imposed Definition.

You Will Never Be Able To Defend Your City While Shouting.

My Fear Of Anger Taught Me Nothing.

It Does Not Pay To Cherish Symbols When The Substance Lies So Close At Hand.

Somedays, If Bitterness Were A Whetstone, I Could Be Sharp As Grief.

In Discussions Around The Hiring And Firing Of Black Faculty At Universities, The Charge Is Frequently Heard That Black Women Are More Easily Hired Than Are Black Men.

I Started Writing Because I Had A Need Inside Of Me To Create Something That Was Not There

Some Problems We Share As Women, Some We Do Not. 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 On The Reasons They Are Dying.

I Have Come To Believe That Caring For Myself Is Not Self-indulgent. Caring For Myself Is An Act Of Survival.

I Have Always Wanted To Be Both Man And Woman, To Incorporate The Strongest And Richest Parts Of My Mother And Father Within/into Me - To Share Valleys And Mountains Upon My Body The Way The Earth Does In Hills And Peaks.

I Want To Live The Rest Of My Life, However Long Or Short, With As Much Sweetness As I Can Decently Manage, Loving All The People I Love, And Doing As Much As I Can Of The Work I Still Have To Do.

... Poetry Is Not A Luxury. It Is A Vital Necessity Of Our Existence. It Forms The Quality Of The Light Within Which We Predicate Our Hopes And Dreams Toward Survival And Change, First Made Into Language, Then Into Idea, Then Into More Tangible Action. Poetry Is The Way We Help Give Name To The Nameless So It Can Be Thought. The Farthest Horizons Of Our Hopes And Fears Are Cobbled By Our Poems, Carved From The Rock Experiences Of Our Daily Lives.

Next Time, Ask: What's The Worst That Will Happen? Then Push Yourself A Little Further Than You Dare.

Women Empowerment

Out Of My Flesh That Hungers And My Mouth That Knows Comes The Shape I Am Seeking For Reason.

For We Have Been Socialized To Respect Fear More Than Our Own Needs For Language And Definition, And While We Wait In Silence For That Final Luxury Of Fearlessness, The Weight Of That Silence Will Choke Us.

It Is Learning How To Stand Alone, Unpopular And Sometimes Reviled, And How To Make Common Cause With Those Other Identified As Outside The Structures, In Order To Define And Seek A World In Which We Can All Flourish. It Is Learning How To Take Our Differences And Make The Strengths. For The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House.

For Each Of Us As Women, There Is A Dark Place Within, Where Hidden And Growing Our True Spirit Rises, Beautiful And Tough As Chestnut Stanchions Against Our Nightmare Of Weakness. Within These Deep Places, Each One Of Us Holds An Incredible Reserve Of Creativity And Power, Of Unexamined And Unrecorded Emotion And Feeling

The Fear That We Cannot Grow Beyond Whatever Distortions We May Find Within Ourselves Keeps Us Docile And Loyal And Obedient, Externally Defined, And Leads Us To Accept Many Facets Of Our Own Oppression As Women.

I Am A Post-mastectomy Woman Who Believes Our Feelings Need Voice In Order To Be Recognized, Respected, And Of Use.

What I Leave Behind Has A Life Of Its Own.

When We Define Ourselves, When I Define Myself, The Place In Which I Am Like You And The Place In Which I Am Not Like You, I'm Not Excluding You From The Joining - I'm Broadening The Joining.

Silence Has Never Brought Us Anything Of Worth.

I Write For Those Women Who Do Not Speak, For Those Who Do Not Have A Voice Because They Were So Terrified, Because We Are Taught To Respect Fear More Than Ourselves. We've Been Taught That Silence Would Save Us, But It Won't.

All Writers Have Periods When They Stop Writing, When They Cannot Write, And This Is Always Painful And Terrible Because Writing Is Like Breathing.

I Cannot Shut You Out The Way I Shut The Others Out, So Maybe I Can Destroy You. Must Destroy You?

… Our Sons Must Become Men – Such Men As We Hope Our Daughters, Born And Unborn, Will Be Pleased To Live Among. Our Sons Will Not Grow Into Women. Their Way Is More Difficult Than That Of Our Daughters, For They Must Move Away From Us, Without Us. Hopefully Ours Have What They Have Learned From Us, And A Howness To Forge Into Their Own Image.

‎once We Recognize What It Is We Are Feeling, Once We Recognize We Can Feel Deeply, Love Deeply, Can Feel Joy, Then We Will Demand That All Parts Of Our Lives Produce That Kind Of Joy.

We Are Powerful Because We Have Survived

Art Is Not Living. It Is The Use Of Living.

But, On The Other Hand, I Get Bored With Racism Too And Recognize That There Are Still Many Things To Be Said About A Black Person And A White Person Loving Each Other In A Racist Society.

If What We Need To Dream, To Move Our Spirits Most Deeply And Directly Toward And Through Promise, Is Discounted As A Luxury, Then We Give Up The Core -- The Fountain -- Of Our Power, Our Womanness; We Give Up The Future Of Our Worlds. (from "poetry Is Not A Luxury")

The Sharing Of Joy, Whether Physical, Emotional, Psychic, Or Intellectual, Forms A Bridge Between The Sharers Which Can Be The Basis For Understanding Much Of What Is Not Shared Between Them, And Lessens The Threat Of Their Difference.

The Erotic Is A Resource Within Each Of Us That Lies In A Deeply Female And Spiritual Plane, Firmly Rooted In The Power Of Our Unexpressed Or Unrecognized Feeling. . . .

If I Didn't Define Myself For Myself, I Would Be Crunched Into Other People's Fantasies For Me And Eaten Alive.

Every Black Woman In America Lives Her Life Somewhere Along A Wide Curve Of Ancient And Unexpressed Angers.

The Erotic Has Often Been Misnamed By Men And Used Against Women. It Has Been Made Into The Confused, The Trivial, The Psychotic, The Plasticized Sensation.

Attend Me, Hold Me In Your Muscular Flowering Arms, Protect Me From Throwing Any Part Of Myself Away.

You Are The One That You Are Looking For.

You Loved People And You Came To Depend On Their Being There. But People Died Or Changed Or Went Away And It Hurt Too Much. The Only Way To Avoid That Poin Was Not To Love Anyone, And Not To Let Anyone Get Too Close Or Too Important. The Secret Of Not Being Hurt Like This Again, I Decided, Was Never Depending On Anyone, Never Needing, Never Loving.it Is The Last Dream Of Children, To Be Forever Untouched.

Nothing I Accept About Myself Can Be Used Against Me To Diminish Me. I Am Who I Am, Doing What I Came To Do, Acting Upon You Like A Drug Or A Chisel To Remind You Of Your Me-ness, As I Discover You In Myself.

I Know The Anger Lies Inside Of Me Like I Know The Beat Of My Heart And The Taste Of My Spit. It Is Easier To Be Furious Than To Be Yearning. Easier To Crucify Myself In You Than To Take On The Threatening Universe Of Whiteness By Admitting That We Are Worth Wanting Each Other.

You Know How Fighting Fish Do It? They Blow Bubbles And In Each One Of Those Bubbles Is An Egg And They Float The Egg Up To The Surface. They Keep This Whole Heavy Nest Of Eggs Floating, And They're Constantly Repairing It. It's As If They Live In Both Elements.

Institutionalized Rejection Of Difference Is An Absolute Necessity In A Profit Economy Which Needs Outsiders As Surplus People.

For We Have Built Into All Of Us, Old Blueprints Of Expectation And Response, Old Structures Of Oppression And These Must Be Altered At The Same Time That We Alter The Living Condition Which Are The Result Of Those Structures. For The Master's Tool Will Never Dismantle The Master's House.

Anger, Used, Does Not Destroy. Hatred Does.

Those Of Us Forged In The Crucibles Of Difference Know That Survival Is Not An Academic Skill.

I Have Died Too Many Deaths That Were Not Mine.

I Would Like To Do Another Piece Of Fiction Dealing With A Number Of Issues: Lesbian Parenting, The 1960's, And Interracial Relationships In The Lesbian And Gay Community.

In The Recognition Of Loving Lies The Answer To Despair.

Stoicism And Silence Does Not Serve Us Nor Our Communities, Only The Forces Of Things As They Are.

What Do We Want From Each Other After We Have Told Our Stories

We Have To Consciously Study How To Be Tender With Each Other Until It Becomes A Habit Because What Was Native Has Been Stolen From Us, The Love Of Black Women For Each Other.

I Am Still Learning - How To Take Joy In All The People I Am, How To Use All My Selves In The Service Of What I Believe, How To Accept When I Fail And Rejoice When I Succeed.

There Are No New Ideas. There Are Only New Ways Of Making Them Felt.

When I Speak Of The Erotic, Then I Speak Of It As An Assertion Of The Life Force Of Women; Of That Creative Energy Empowered, The Knowledge And Use Of Which We Are Now Reclaiming In Our Language, Our History, Our Dancing, Our Loving, Our Work, Our Lives.

There Is No Thing As A Single-issue Struggle Because We Do Not Live Single-issue Lives.

One Pays A Lot, We All Pay A Lot, For Awareness.

We Have Been Raised To Fear The Yes Within Ourselves, Our Deepest Cravings.

Within The Lesbian Community I Am Black, And Within The Black Community I Am A Lesbian. Any Attack Against Black People Is A Lesbian And Gay Issue, Because I And Thousands Of Other Black Women Are Part Of The Lesbian Community. Any Attack Against Lesbians And Gays Is A Black Issue, Because Thousands Of Lesbians And Gay Men Are Black. There Is No Hierarchy Of Oppression.

I Am A Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, Stronger For All My Identities, And I Am Indivisible.

Pain Is Important: How We Evade It, How We Succumb To It, How We Deal With It, How We Transcend It.

The Quality Of Light By Which We Scrutinize Our Lives Has Direct Bearing Upon The Product Which We Live, And Upon The Changes Which We Hope To Bring About Through Those Lives. It Is Within This Light That We Form Those Ideas By Which We Pursue Our Magic And Make It Realized. This Is Poetry As Illumination, For It Is Through Poetry That We Give Name To Those Ideas Which Are, Until The Poem, Nameless And Formless-about To Be Birthed, But Already Felt.

Our Feelings Are Our Most Genuine Paths To Knowledge. They Are Chaotic, Sometimes Painful, Sometimes Contradictory, But They Come From Deep Within Us. And We Must Key Into Those Feelings... This Is How New Visions Begin.

When You Reach Out And Touch Other Human Beings, It Doesn't Matter Whether You Call It Therapy Or Teaching Or Poetry.

If You Don’t Define Yourself For Yourself Then You Will Be Crushed Into Other's Fantasies Of You And Eaten Alive

Define Yourself

Differences Must Be Not Merely Tolerated, But Seen As A Fund Of Necessary Polarities Between Which Our Creativity Can Spark Like A Dialectic.

Without Community, There Is No Liberation.

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.

The Failure Of Academic Feminists To Recognize Difference As A Crucial Strength Is A Failure To Reach Beyond The First Patriarchal Lesson. In Our World, Divide And Conquer Must Become Define And Empower.

It's A Struggle But That's Why We Exist, So That Another Generation Of Lesbians Of Color Will Not Have To Invent Themselves, Or Their History, All Over Again.

The Love Expressed Between Women Is Particular And Powerful Because We Have Had To Love In Order To Live; Love Has Been Our Survival.

...my Experience With People Who Tried To Label Me Was That They Usually Did It To Either Dismiss Me Or Use Me.

Tell Them About How You're Never Really A Whole Person If You Remain Silent, Because There's Always That One Little Piece Inside You That Wants To Be Spoken Out, And If You Keep Ignoring It, It Gets Madder And Madder And Hotter And Hotter, And If You Don't Speak It Out One Day It Will Just Up And Punch You In The Mouth From The Inside.

I Stand Here As A Black Lesbian Feminist, Having Been Invited To Comment Within The Only Panel At This Conference Where The Input Of Black Feminists And Lesbians Is Represented. What This Says About The Vision Of This Conference Is Sad, In A Country Where Racism, Sexism And Homophobia Are Inseparable. . . .

Heterosexuality Is

Hatred Is The Fury Of Those Who Do Not Share Our Goals, And Its Object Is Death And Destruction. Anger Is A Grief Of Distortions Between Peers, And Its Object Is Change.

I Soon Discovered That If You Keep Your Mouth Shut, People Are Apt To Believe You Know Everything, And They Begin To Feel Freer And Freer To Tell You Anything, Anxious To Show That They Know Something, Too.

I Became More Courageous By Doing The Very Things I Needed To Be Courageous For-first, A Little, And Badly. Then, Bit By Bit, More And Better. Being Avidly-sometimes Annoy-ingly-curious And Persistent About Discovering How Others Were Doing What I Wanted To Do.

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?

Black Women Are Programmed To Define Ourselves Within This Male Attention And To Compete With Each Other For It Rather Than To Recognize And Move Upon Our Common Interests.

But In A Crunch, When All Our Asses Are In The Sling, It Looks Like It Is Easier To Deal With The Samenesses. When We Deal With Sameness Only, We Develop Weapons That We Use Against Each Other When The Differences Become Apparent. And We Wipe Each Other Out - Black Men And Women Can Wipe Each Other Out - Far More Effectively Than Outsiders Do.

When You Are A Member Of An Out-group, And You Challenge Others With Whom You Share This Outsider Position To Examine Some Aspect Of Their Lives That Distorts Differences Between You, Then There Can Be A Great Deal Of Pain.

I Am On The Cusp Of Change And The Curve Is Shifting Fast.

Some Women Wait For Themselves Around The Next Corner And Call The Empty Spot Peace But The Opposite Of Living Is Only Not Living And The Stars Do Not Care.

What Woman Here Is So Enamored Of Her Own Oppression That She Cannot See Her Heel Print Upon Another Woman's Face?

When I Dare To Be Powerful - To Use My Strength In The Service Of My Vision, Then It Becomes Less And Less Important Whether I Am Afraid.

I Realize That If I Wait Until I Am No Longer Afraid To Act, Write, Speak, Be, I'll Be Sending Messages On A Ouija Board, Cryptic Complaints From The Other Side

The Fact That We Are Here And That I Speak These Words Is An Attempt To Break That Silence And Bridge Some Of Those Differences Between Us, For It Is Not Difference Which Immobilizes Us, But Silence. And There Are So Many Silences To Be Broken.

June Jordan Once Said Something Which Is Just Wonderful. I'm Paraphrasing Her-that Her Function As A Poet Was To Make Revolution Irresistible. Well O.k. That Is The Function Of Us All, As Creative Artists, To Make The Truth, As We See It Irresistible.

Anger Is An Appropriate Reaction To Racist Attitudes, As Is Fury When The Actions Arising From Those Attitudes Do Not Change.

There Are Lesbians, God Knows... If You Came Up Through Lesbian Circles In The Forties And Fifties In New York... Who Were Not Feminist And Would Not Call Themselves Feminists.

Guilt Is Only Another Way Of Avoiding Informed Action.

I Am Not Just A Lesbian. I Am Not Just A Poet. I Am Not Just A Mother. Honor The Complexity Of Your Vision And Yourselves.

Hopefully, We Can Learn From The 60s That We Cannot Afford To Do Our Enemies Work By Destroying Each Other.

Perhaps...i Am The Face Of One Of Your Fears. Because I Am A Woman, Because I Am Black, Because I Am A Lesbian, Because I Am Myself--a Black Woman Warrior Poet Doing My Work--come To Ask You, Are You Doing Yours?

Only By Learning To Live In Harmony With Your Contradictions Can You Keep It All Afloat.

There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women.

And Where The Words Of Women Are Crying To Be Heard, We Must Each Of Us Recognize Our Responsibility To Seek Those Words Out, To Read Them And Share Them And Examine Them In Their Pertinence To Our Lives.

Some Words Live In My Throat Breeding Like Adders. Others Know Sun Seeking Like Gypsies Over My Tongue To Explode Through My Lips

There Is A Timbre Of Voice That Comes From Not Being Heard And Knowing / You Are Not Being Heard / Noticed Only By Others / Not Heard For The Same Reason.

Well, I Do Not Want To Be Tolerated, Nor Misnamed. I Want To Be Recognized.

We Recognize That All Knowledge Is Mediated Through The Body And That Feeling Is A Profound Source Of Information About Our Lives

To Face The Realities Of Our Lives Is Not A Reason For Despair-despair Is A Tool Of Your Enemies. Facing The Realities Of Our Lives Gives Us Motivation For Action. For You Are Not Powerless... You Know Why The Hard Questions Must Be Asked. It Is Not Altruism, It Is Self-preservation-survival.

I Learned To Read From Mrs. Augusta Baker, The Children's Librarian. ... If That Was The Only Good Deed That Lady Ever Did In Her Life, May She Rest In Peace. Because That Deed Saved My Life, If Not Sooner, Then Later, When Sometimes The Only Thing I Had To Hold On To Was Knowing I Could Read.

Life Is Very Short And What We Have To Do Must Be Done In The Now.

Your Silence Will Not Protect You.

The Strongest Lesson I Can Teach My Son Is The Same Lesson I Teach My Daughter: How To Be Who He Wishes To Be For Himself.

Those Of Us Who Stand Outside The Circle Of This Society's Definition Of Acceptable Women; Those Of Us Who Have Been Forged In The Crucibles Of Difference - Those Of Us Who Are Poor, Who Are Lesbians, Who Are Black, Who Are Older - Know That Survival Is Not An Academic Skill...for The Master's Tools Will Not Dismantle The Master's House. They Will Never Allow Us To Bring About Genuine Change.

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.

I Have Suckled The Wolf's Lip Of Anger And I Have Used It For Illumination, Laughter, Protection, Fire In Places Where There Was No Light, No Food, No Sisters, No Quarter.

We Cannot Settle For The Pretenses Of Connection, Or For The Parodies Of Self-love.

Advocating The Mere Tolerance Of Difference Between Women Is The Grossest Reformism. It Is A Total Denial Of The Creative Function Of Difference In Our Lives. Difference Must Be Not Merely Toleration, But Seen As A Fund Of Necessary Polarities Between Which Our Creativity Can Spark Like A Dialectic. Only Then Does The Necessity For Interdependency Become Unthreatening. Only Within The Interdependency Of Different Strengths, Acknowledged And Equal, Can The Power To Seek New Ways Of Being In The World Generate, As Well As The Courage And Sustenance To Act Where There Are No Charters

Poetry Is Not A Luxury.

Oppression Is As American As Apple Pie.

But The Question Is A Matter Of The Survival And The Teaching. That's What Our Work Comes Down To. No Matter Where We Key Into It, It's The Same Work, Just Different Pieces Of Ourselves Doing It.

The Oppression Of Women Knows No Ethnic Nor Racial Boundaries, True, But That Does Not Mean It Is Identical Within Those Boundaries.

When We Create Out Of Our Experiences, As Feminists Of Color, Women Of Color, We Have To Develop Those Structures That Will Present And Circulate Our Culture.

Afraid Is A Country With No Exit Visas.

I Can't Really Define It In Sexual Terms Alone Although Our Sexuality Is So Energizing Why Not Enjoy It Too?

I Am Black Because I Come From The Earth's Inside Now Take My Word For Jewel In The Open Light.

Every Woman I Have Ever Known Has Made A Lasting Impression On My Soul.

Lasting Impressions

I Am A Bleak Heroism Of Words That Refuse To Be Buried Alive With The Liars.

Raising Black Children — Female And Male — In The Mouth Of A Racist, Sexist, Suicidal Dragon Is Perilous And Chancy. If They Cannot Love And Resist At The Same Time, They Will Probably Not Survive. And In Order To Survive They Must Let Go. This Is What Mothers Teach — Love, Survival — That Is, Self-definition And Letting Go.

Battling Racism And Battling Heterosexism And Battling Apartheid Share The Same Urgency Inside Me As Battling Cancer.

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 Or Misunderstood.

It Is Axiomatic That If We Do Not Define Ourselves For Ourselves, We Will Be Defined By Others-for Their Use And To Our Detriment.

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.

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.

We Have Too Often Been Expected To Speak All Things To All People And Speak Everyone Else's Position But Our Own.

For The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House. They May Allow Us To Temporarily Beat Him At His Own Game, But They Will Never Enable Us To Bring About Genuine Change. Racism And Homophobia Are Real Conditions Of All Our Lives In This Place And Time. I Urge Each One Of Us Here To Reach Down Into That Deep Place Of Knowledge Inside Herself And Touch That Terror And Loathing Of Any Difference That Lives Here. See Whose Face It Wears. Then The Personal As The Political Can Begin To Illuminate All Our Choices.

The Sixties Were Characterized By A Heady Belief In Instantaneous Solutions.

Sometimes We Are Blessed With Being Able To Choose The Time, And The Arena, And The Manner Of Our Revolution, But More Usually We Must Do Battle Where We Are Standing.

Women Are Powerful And Dangerous.

We're Supposed To See "universal" Love As Heterosexual. What I Insist Upon In My Work Is That There Is No Such Thing As Universal Love In Literature.

We Are All In The Process Of Becoming.

In Order To Perpetuate Itself, Every Oppression Must Corrupt Or Distort Those Various Sources Of Power Within The Culture Of The Oppressed That Can Provide Energy For Change.

What Is There Possibly Left For Us To Be Afraid Of, After We Have Dealt Face To Face With Death And Not Embraced It? Once I Accept The Existence Of Dying As A Life Process, Who Can Ever Have Power Over Me Again?

The Quality Of Light By Which We Scrutinize Our Lives Has Direct Bearing Upon The Product Which We Live, And Upon The Changes Which We Hope To Bring About Through Those Lives.

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