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So It Is Better To Speak, Remembering We Were Never Meant To Survive.
-Audre Lorde
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So It Is Better

Audre Lorde
...
So It Is Better To Speak, Remembering We Were Never Meant To Survive.

Understanding the Quote: "so it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to..."

This quote by Audre Lorde reflects deeply on the theme of remember. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Remember, Speak, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Audre Lorde interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde is celebrated for insightful thoughts on remember and speak. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Remember
Speak
More From Audre Lorde
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.
Order
Different
Pieces
Hopefully, We Can Learn From The 60s That We Cannot Afford To Do Our Enemies Work By Destroying Each Other.
Enemy
Destroying
Hopefully
We Must Constantly Encourage Ourselves And Each Other To Attempt The Heretical Actions That Our Dreams Imply And So Many Of Our Old Ideas Disparage.
Dream
Ideas
Action
If You Don’t Define Yourself For Yourself Then You Will Be Crushed Into Other's Fantasies Of You And Eaten Alive
Alive
Fantasy
Define Yourself
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.
Women
Responsibility
Gay
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.
Strong Women
Honesty
Silence
There Is No Thing As A Single-issue Struggle Because We Do Not Live Single-issue Lives.
Struggle
Issues
Feminism
Institutionalized Rejection Of Difference Is An Absolute Necessity In A Profit Economy Which Needs Outsiders As Surplus People.
Differences
People
Rejection
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.
Skills
Circles
Differences
As A Black Lesbian Feminist Comfortable With The Many Different Ingredients Of My Identity, And A Woman Committed To Racial And Sexual Freedom From Oppression, I Find I Am Constantly Being Encouraged To Pluck Out Some One Aspect Of Myself And Present This As The Meaningful Whole, Eclipsing Or Denying The Other Parts Of Self. But This Is A Destructive And Fragmenting Way To Live.
Meaningful
Acceptance
Self
Poetry Is Not A Luxury.
Luxury
Poetry Is
Differences Must Be Not Merely Tolerated, But Seen As A Fund Of Necessary Polarities Between Which Our Creativity Can Spark Like A Dialectic.
Creativity
Differences
Sparks
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.
Jobs
Real
Believe
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.
Confused
Men
Erotic
The Transformation Of Silence Into Language And Action Is An Act Of Self-revelation .
Self
Silence
Action
I Am On The Cusp Of Change And The Curve Is Shifting Fast.
Change
Curves
Shifting
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
Beautiful
Creativity
Dark
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
Hope
Morning
Fear
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.
Meaningful
Ideas
Differences
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.
Moving
Racism
Competition
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.
Inspirational
Strength
Success
Life Is Very Short And What We Have To Do Must Be Done In The Now.
Life
Reality
Done
We Are All In The Process Of Becoming.
Graduation
Becoming
Process
We Must Wake Up Knowing We Have Work To Do And Go To Bed Knowing We've Done It.
Knowing
Bed
Wake Up
. . . 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.
Names
Ideas
Giving
[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.
Pain
Light
Safety
We Recognize That All Knowledge Is Mediated Through The Body And That Feeling Is A Profound Source Of Information About Our Lives
Profound
Feelings
Body
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.
Dancing
Creative
Erotic
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.
Children
Suicidal
Dragons
I Am Very, Very Happy For Alice Walker.
Literature
Very Happy
Walkers
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.
Lonely
Hate
Cities
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.
Mean
Differences
Community
From My Membership In All Of These Groups I Have Learned That Oppression And The Intolerance Of Difference Come In All Shapes And Sizes And Colors And Sexualities; And That Among Those Of Us Who Share The Goals Of Liberation And A Workable Future For Our Children, There Can Be No Hierarchies Of Oppression.
Children
Color
Differences
Pornography Is A Direct Denial Of The Power Of The Erotic, For It Represents The Suppression Of True Feeling. Pornography Emphasizes Sensation Without Feeling.
Erotic
Feelings
Denial
Pain Is Important: How We Evade It, How We Succumb To It, How We Deal With It, How We Transcend It.
Pain
Important
Deals
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.
Believe
Hands
Silence
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.
Laughter
Anger
Fire
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.
Lonely
Gay
Keys
I Am My Best Work - A Series Of Road Maps, Reports, Recipes, Doodles, And Prayers From The Front Lines.
Inspirational
Prayer
Maps
Out Of My Flesh That Hungers And My Mouth That Knows Comes The Shape I Am Seeking For Reason.
Mouths
Shapes
Flesh
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.
Responsibility
Safe
Settling
There Are No New Ideas. There Are Only New Ways Of Making Them Felt.
Ideas
Black History
Way
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.
Blessed
Battle
Able
I Am Not Free While Any Woman Is Unfree, Even When Her Shackles Are Very Different From My Own.
Feminist
Fearless
Different
Silence Has Never Brought Us Anything Of Worth.
Silence
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.
New York
Circles
Feminist
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.
Hate
Grief
Anger
Every Black Woman In America Lives Her Life Somewhere Along A Wide Curve Of Ancient And Unexpressed Angers.
Curves
America
Black
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.
Ifs
Anger Is An Appropriate Reaction To Racist Attitudes, As Is Fury When The Actions Arising From Those Attitudes Do Not Change.
Attitude
Anger
Racism
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.
Struggle
Mean
Feminist
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.
Future
Joy
Tomorrow
When You Reach Out And Touch Other Human Beings, It Doesn't Matter Whether You Call It Therapy Or Teaching Or Poetry.
Teaching
Matter
Reach Out
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.
Perseverance
Believe
Self
We Cannot Settle For The Pretenses Of Connection, Or For The Parodies Of Self-love.
Self
Connections
Settling
Say What You Have To Say Now! Don't Wait Until You're Sending Blips From The Other Side.
Waiting
Sides
All Writers Have Periods When They Stop Writing, When They Cannot Write, And This Is Always Painful And Terrible Because Writing Is Like Breathing.
Writing
Breathing
Painful
Poetry Is The Way We Help Give Name To The Nameless So It Can Be Thought.
Names
Giving
Way
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.
Fear
Women
Writing
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.
Silence
Protect You
Protected
For Within Livin Structures Defined By Profit, By Linear Power, By Institutional Dehumanization, Our Feelings Were Not Meant To Survive. Kept Around As Unavoidable Adjuncts Or Pleasant Pastimes, Our Feelings Were Expected To Kneel To Thought As Women Were Expected To Kneel To Men. But Women Have Survived. As Poets.
Men
Feelings
Poet
The Difference Between Poetry And Rhetoric Is Being Ready To Kill Yourself Instead Of Your Children.
Children
Differences
Poetry
Because The Machine Will Try To Grind You Into Dust Anyway, Whether Or Not We Speak.
Dust
Trying
Machines
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.
Firsts
Littles
Courageous
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.
Long
People
Want
I Am Black Because I Come From The Earth's Inside Now Take My Word For Jewel In The Open Light.
Light
Jewels
Black
Nothing I Accept About Myself Can Be Used Against Me To Diminish Me.
Accepting
Used
Diminish
… 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.
Daughter
Moving
Son
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.
Writing
Circles
Racism
There Are No Honest Poems About Dead Women.
Honest
Oppression Is As American As Apple Pie.
Apples
Pie
Apple Pie
I Am Deliberate And Afraid Of Nothing.
Inspirational
Life
Inspiring
So It Is Better To Speak, Remembering We Were Never Meant To Survive.
Remember
Speak
Of All The Art Forms, Poetry Is The Most Economical. It Is The One Which Is The Most Secret, Which Requires The Least Physical Labor, The Least Material, And The One Which Can Be Done Between Shifts, In The Hospital Pantry, On The Subway, And On Scraps Of Surplus Paper. ... Poetry Has Been The Major Voice Of Poor, Working Class, And Colored Women. A Room Of One's Own May Be A Necessity For Writing Prose, But So Are Reams Of Paper, A Typewriter, And Plenty Of Time.
Art
Writing
Typewriters
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.
Fear
Silence
Needs
I Cannot Shut You Out The Way I Shut The Others Out, So Maybe I Can Destroy You. Must Destroy You?
Way
I Can
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.
Gay
Men
Issues
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. . . .
Spiritual
Lying
Erotic
The Sixties Were Characterized By A Heady Belief In Instantaneous Solutions.
Literature
Belief
Instantaneous
Well, I Do Not Want To Be Tolerated, Nor Misnamed. I Want To Be Recognized.
Want
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.
Love Is
Light
Jewels
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.
Real
Differences
Silence
We Have Been Raised To Fear The Yes Within Ourselves, Our Deepest Cravings.
Raised
Craving
Has Beens
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.
Luxury
Silence
Waiting
The Oppression Of Women Knows No Ethnic Nor Racial Boundaries, True, But That Does Not Mean It Is Identical Within Those Boundaries.
Mean
Doe
Oppression
For Those Of Us Who Write, It Is Necessary To Scrutinize Not Only The Truth Of What We Speak, But The Truth Of That Language By Which We Speak It.
Truth
Writing
Language
If I Didn't Define Myself For Myself, I Would Be Crunched Into Other People's Fantasies For Me And Eaten Alive.
Inspiring
Being Yourself
People
Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
Inspiring
Healing
Commitment
For Women, The Need And Desire To Nurture Each Other Is Not Pathological But Redemptive, And It Is Within That Knowledge That Our Real Power Is Rediscovered. It Is This Real Connection, Which Is So Feared By A Patriarchal World.
Real
Desire
Connections
Pain Is Important: How We Evade It, How We Succumb To It, How We Deal With It, How We Transcend It. ... Pain Will Always Either Change Or Stop. Always. ... The Confidence That It Will Change Is What Makes Bearing It Possible. So Pain Is Fluid. It Is Only When You Conceive Of It As Something Static That It Is Unbearable.
Pain
Important
Unbearable
Next Time, Ask: What's The Worst That Will Happen? Then Push Yourself A Little Further Than You Dare.
Women Empowerment
Littles
Next
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.
Pain
Rain
Survival
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.
Men
Differences
Black
I Cannot Afford To Believe That Freedom From Intolerance Is The Right Of Only One Particular Group. And I Cannot Afford To Choose Between The Fronts Upon Which I Must Battle These Forces Of Discrimination, Wherever They Appear To Destroy Me. And When They Appear To Destroy Me, It Will Not Be Long Before They Appear To Destroy You.
Believe
Long
Battle
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.
Keys
Feelings
Vision
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.
One Day
Pieces
Mouths
Without Community, There Is No Liberation.
Change
Community
Collaboration
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.
Mother
Honor
Vision
Anger, Used, Does Not Destroy. Hatred Does.
Hatred
Black History
Doe
Self-care Is Not About Self-indulgence , It Is About Self-preservati On.
Self
Care
Indulgence
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.
Peace
Equality
Emotional
But The True Feminist Deals Out Of A Lesbian Consciousness Whether Or Not She Ever Sleeps With Women.
Motivational
Sleep
Feminist
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.
Years
Wind
Two
Revolution Is Not A One Time Event.
Revolution
Events
One Time
What Do We Want From Each Other After We Have Told Our Stories
Stories
Want
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.
Destiny
Luxury
Giving
Our Visions Begin With Our Desires.
Inspirational
Vision
Desire
... It Is Not Difference Which Immobilizes Us, But Silence.
Differences
Silence
I Am Not Only A Casualty, I Am Also A Warrior.
Warrior
Casualties
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.
Believe
People
Mouths
In Other Words, I Would Be Giving In To A Myth Of Sameness Which I Think Can Destroy Us.
Thinking
Giving
Would Be
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.
Gay
Men
Silence
You Will Never Be Able To Defend Your City While Shouting.
Cities
Able
Shouting
We Must Recognize And Nurture The Creative Parts Of Each Other Without Always Understanding What Will Be Created.
Creative
Understanding
Nurture
I Agreed To Take Part In A New York University Institute For Humanities Conference A Year Ago. . . .
New York
Heterosexuality Is
Years
Pain Is An Event ... Suffering, On The Other Hand, Is The Nightmare Reliving Of Unscrutinized And Unmetabolized Pain.
Pain
Hands
Suffering
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.
Rest In Peace
Children
Reading
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.
Mother
Teacher
Keys
...and That Visibility Which Makes Us Most Vulnerable Is That Which Also Is The Source Of Our Greatest Strength.
Inspirational
Visibility
Vulnerable
The Learning Process Is Something You Can Incite, Literally Incite, Like A Riot.
Process
Riot
Learning Process
We Have Too Often Been Expected To Speak All Things To All People And Speak Everyone Else's Position But Our Own.
People
Speak
Position
The Absence Of Any Consideration Of Lesbian Consciousness Or The Consciousness Of Third World Women Leaves A Serious Gap Within This Conference. . . .
Heterosexuality Is
World
Gaps
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.
Expectations
House
Tools
Only By Learning To Live In Harmony With Your Contradictions Can You Keep It All Afloat.
Inspiring
Harmony
Contradiction
Afraid Is A Country With No Exit Visas.
Country
Fear
Exit
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.
Loyal
May
Oppression
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.
Black
Literature
Study
My Fear Of Anger Taught Me Nothing.
Anger
Taught
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. . . .
Country
Heterosexuality Is
Racism
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.
Men
Black
Faculty
Women Are Powerful And Dangerous.
Powerful
Dangerous
I Am A Bleak Heroism Of Words That Refuse To Be Buried Alive With The Liars.
Liars
Heroism
Alive
I Train Myself For Triumph By Knowing It Is Mine No Matter What.
Knowing
Triumph
Matter
‎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.
Love
Inspiring
Happiness
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.
Philosophy
Oneness
Air
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.
Fighting
Blow
Eggs
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.
Mother
Knowing
Mouths
What I Most Regretted Were My Silences. Of What Had I Ever Been Afraid?
Silence
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.
Self
Who I Am
Energy
Attend Me, Hold Me In Your Muscular Flowering Arms, Protect Me From Throwing Any Part Of Myself Away.
Arms
Throwing
Hold Me
Somedays, If Bitterness Were A Whetstone, I Could Be Sharp As Grief.
Grief
Bitterness
Ifs
Black Women Sharing Close Ties With Each Other, Politically Or Emotionally, Are Not The Enemies Of Black Men.
Men
Ties
Black
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.
Sex
Race
Long
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.
Light
Quality
Literature
It Is Not Our Differences That Divide Us. It Is Our Inability To Recognize, Accept, And Celebrate Those Differences.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Equality
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.
Teaching
Keys
Survival
It Does Not Pay To Cherish Symbols When The Substance Lies So Close At Hand.
Lying
Hands
Doe
Hatred Is A Death Wish For The Hated, Not A Life Wish For Anything Else.
Forgiveness
Hatred
Wish
I Am A Post-mastectomy Woman Who Believes Our Feelings Need Voice In Order To Be Recognized, Respected, And Of Use.
Believe
Order
Voice
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.
Dying
Want
Praying
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.
Believe
Fire
Order
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.
Struggle
Color
Generations
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.
Artist
June
Creative
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.
Kinky
Literature
Universal Love
I Learned So Much From Listening To People. And All I Knew Was, The Only Thing I Had Was Honesty And Openness.
Honesty
People
Listening
There Is No Hierarchy Of Oppressions
Hierarchy
Oppression
Guilt Is Only Another Way Of Avoiding Informed Action.
Guilt
Way
Action
Wherever The Bird With No Feet Flew, She Found Trees With No Limbs.
Feet
Bird
Tree
I Can't Really Define It In Sexual Terms Alone Although Our Sexuality Is So Energizing Why Not Enjoy It Too?
Why Not
Literature
Sexuality
Divide And Conquer Must Become Define And Empower.
Empowering
Conquer
Divide And Conquer
One Pays A Lot, We All Pay A Lot, For Awareness.
Pay
Awareness
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.
Pain
Differences
Challenges
Those Of Us Forged In The Crucibles Of Difference Know That Survival Is Not An Academic Skill.
Skills
Differences
Crucible
Battling Racism And Battling Heterosexism And Battling Apartheid Share The Same Urgency Inside Me As Battling Cancer.
Cancer
Racism
Justice
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.
Real
Games
Differences
The True Focus Of Revolutionary Change Is Never Merely The Oppressive Situations That We Seek To Escape, But That Piece Of The Oppressor Which Is Planted Deep Within Each Of Us.
Focus
Pieces
Revolutionary
The Erotic Is A Measure Between The Beginnings Of Our Sense Of Self And The Chaos Of Our Strongest Feelings.
Self
Erotic
Feelings
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?
Warrior
Black
Faces
Unless One Lives And Loves In The Trenches, It Is Difficult To Remember That The War Against Dehumanization Is Ceaseless.
Life And Love
War
Remember
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.
Use
Defined
Ifs
The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House.
Peace
Power
House
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.
Gay
Numbers
Issues
Stoicism And Silence Does Not Serve Us Nor Our Communities, Only The Forces Of Things As They Are.
Silence
Community
Doe
Guilt Is Not A Response To Anger; It Is A Response To One's Own Actions Or Lack Of Action.
Guilt
Action
Response
Some Words Live In My Throat Breeding Like Adders. Others Know Sun Seeking Like Gypsies Over My Tongue To Explode Through My Lips
Tongue
Sun
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.
Voice
Knowing
Reason
The Love Expressed Between Women Is Particular And Powerful Because We Have Had To Love In Order To Live; Love Has Been Our Survival.
Powerful
Order
Survival
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.
Voice
Issues
Black
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.
Order
Energy
Culture
Who I Am Is What Fulfills Me And Fulfills The Vision I Have Of The World.
Self Esteem
Who I Am
Vision
We Are Powerful Because We Have Survived
Powerful
Survived
I Find I Am Constantly Being Encouraged To Pluck Out Some One Aspect Of Myself And Present This As The Meaningful Whole, Eclipsing Or Denying The Other Parts Of Self.
Meaningful
Self
Pluck
You Are The One That You Are Looking For.
Healing
Lourdes
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.
Joining
Like You
To That Piece In Each Of Us That Refuses To Be Silent.
Pieces
Silent
Refuse
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?
Children
Color
White
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.
Hands
White
Racism
I Started Writing Because I Had A Need Inside Of Me To Create Something That Was Not There
Writing
Needs
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.
Color
Feminist
Culture
Silence And Invisibility Go Hand In Hand With Powerlessness.
Hands
Silence
Invisibility
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.
Our World
Differences
Empowering
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.
Inspirational
Believe
Acceptance
Caring For Myself Is Not Self-indulgence, It Is Self-preservation, And That Is An Act Of Political Warfare.
Caring
Compassion
Self
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.
Who I Am
Drug
Over You
...my Experience With People Who Tried To Label Me Was That They Usually Did It To Either Dismiss Me Or Use Me.
People
Labels
Use
If Our History Has Taught Us Anything, It Is That Action For Change Directed Against The External Conditions Of Our Oppressions Is Not Enough.
Taught Us
Action
Oppression
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.
Rocks
Names
Giving
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")
Dream
Giving Up
Moving
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.
Children
Growing Up
White
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.
Emotional
Play
Empowering
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