Reflections inspired by a true Blackwildgirl, Audre Lorde.
“Girl, it is better to speak. For you are still here. Still alive. Still with words. Still with words. Still with words that want so urgently and insistently to be written, to be spoken, to have impact.” Menah Pratt (Blackwildgirl).
This coming week, I am delivering the Samuel D. Proctor Lecture at Rutgers.
It is a virtual only event, so you can still register to join if you like.
https://proctor.gse.rutgers.edu/sdpls
My lecture is inspired by Audre Lorde and in preparation, I just finished reading “The Selected Works of Audre Lorde,” edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay.
There are selected essays, poems, and journal excerpts chronicling her cancer journey.
I was inspired to write in the book as I read and got inspired by particular words, phrases, and ideas.
In “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” she writes: “For within living 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, feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already.” (p. 6).
The phrase that captured my imagination was “institutional dehumanization.”
I wrote in the book:
“What is institutional dehumanization? Audre Lorde writes of this as she does of much disrespect we Black women, women of color, and indigenous women face. It is those many moments when we are the subject of gossip and whispers, when we are ignored though present, when our names are not called on the honor roll, though we are listed on it, when we have felt pulverized into pulp by the blender of disrespect, churning, twisting our feelings into refined mush, no longer recognizable even to ourselves. It is when we realize we gave our souls and our hearts out of goodwill to a deceitful monster waiting to attack, chew, and gnash us to pieces. I’ve seen these women, brilliant, diligent, amazing, caring, compassionate, discarded on to the sidewalk of the world for public scorn and humiliation. Their offices packed up for them, their precious office trinkets and awards thrown aside leaving us crawling to find our self-respect and pride, knowing that only the Mother of God can breathe breath into our weary bones and into our broken heart and spirits to revive us again like the phoenix that against all odds rises from ashes.”
I continue reading and writing. In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” Audre Lorde writes: “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.” (p. 9). She asks, “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?” (p.11).
In reflection, I write in the book:
“The transformation of silence into action requires fearlessness – but wait, no, we must do it with our fear because it will take too long and require too much courage to become fearless. We must transform silence into words and actions while we are afraid, even as our voices shake, like earthquakes, and our legs feel as if they will give out, leaving us slumped on the bare brown ground of dust. We must speak. We must write. We must release into the universe all the words that we were sent here to share so that they are not buried with us in graves of silent mortality.”
I continue reading. In “My Mother’s Mortar,” Audre Lorde writes about her mother’s mortar used to pound space and garlic and other herbs in West Indian culture. She writes about getting her period and what it meant for her to use her mother’s mortar as a woman.
In the book I write:
“When girls become women, we feel our own power. We sense our inner energy to create. We gain access to a previously secret and hidden resource. We know we are divine with goddess energy to draw blood with metaphorical weapons; to own a power that men do not have. It is a power that makes them jealous, a power so strong that patriarchy continually attempts to eradicate it. It is that power that bursts forth like a 100 foot waterfall saying yes, yes, I can do anything.”
I continue reading. In “The Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde writes about women who are dangerous because they are empowered: “Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence.” (p. 34). She writes: “We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.” (p. 34).
I write in the book:
“What is my erotic power? It is a force that pushes me almost unconsciously to write. It is an energy that pulls me to flowers. It is a wind that carries me to waterfalls. It is a charge that electrifies ordinary days to become extraordinary. It is the yes when my fear wants to say no. It is the goodness when evil appears. It is the hope when the world appears hopeless and it’s the love that I feel in my spirit, affirming me unconditionally.”
I continue reading:
In “The Master’s Tools will never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Audre Lorde writes, “survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and hot to make common cause with those others 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 them strengths. 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.” (p. 42).
In the book I write:
“Being a black woman or woman of color in academia often means standing alone, unpopular, sometimes and often times reviled. It means many moments of questioning the unanswerable; seeking understanding of the inexplicable racism, sexism, just because of my blackness and womanness, wondering how melanin and a vagina can reduce me to invisibility, literally unseen when present, questioning my own visibility, making me question whether I exist at all, yet the hot sweaty tears down my face remind me that I am very much here, alone, unpopular, a contrarian, sometimes and often times reviled, yet still here.”
I continue reading. In “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” Audre Lorde writes: “Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and cooptation.” (p. 53). She writes: “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change….Anger is loaded with information and energy.” (p. 57).
She writes, “Women of Color in america have grown up within a symphony of anger, at being silenced, at being unchosen, at knowing that when we survive, it is in spite of a world that takes for granted our lack of humanness, and which hates our very existence outside of its service. And I say symphony rather than cacophony because we have had to learn to orchestrate those furies so that they do tear us apart. We have had to learn to move through them and use them for strength and force and insight within our daily lives. Those of us who did not learn this difficult lesson did not survive. And part of my anger is always libation for my fallen sisters.” (p. 59-60). She writes: “My response to racism is anger. That anger has eaten clefts into my living only when it remained unspoken, useless to anyone.” (p. 62).
She continues: “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 have learned to use anger as we have learned to use the dead flesh of animals, and bruised, battered, and changing, we have survived and grown and, in Angela Wilson’s words, we are moving on.” And she concludes: “For it is not the anger of Black women which is dripping down over this globe like a diseased liquid. It is not my anger that launches rockets, spends over sixty thousand dollars a second on missiles and other agents of war and death, slaughters children in cities stockpiles nerve gas and chemical bombs, sodomizes our daughters and our earth.” (p. 64).
And I write:
“How, How can I use my anger for good? How can I like Audre Lorde calls me to do, translate anger into action?
How, how can I use my anger for good when each day it is refueled by the silencing, the dismissiveness, the disrespect?
How can I convert my tears to arrows, to weapons that can be used to pierce the unpierceable shields of racism, sexism, humiliation, dehumanization?
How, how can I use my anger for good?
How can my anger transform situations and circumstances of hopelessness into hope?
Can my fury become furious for a good cause?”
I continue reading, finding inspiration in “A Burst of Light,” Audre Lorde’s December 9, 1985 journal entry in New York City: “A better question is—how do I want to live the rest of my life and what am I going to do to ensure that I get to do it exactly or as close as possible to how I want that living to be? 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. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere. Until it’s every breath, I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!” (p. 109).
She continues to express her commitment:
“I work, I love, I rest, I see and learn. And I report. These are my givens. Not sureties, but a firm belief that whether or not living them with joy prolongs my life, it certainly enables me to pursue the objectives of that life with a deeper and more effective clarity.” (p. 165).
And I write: “What are my givens?” I know that I need to reflect and remember and refresh my own givens for my life.
I continue reading:
In “Is your Hair Still Political,” writes about being accosted in the Caribbean and threated with deportation because of her dreadlocks. (p. 167).
I write:
“Yes, my hair is political. It goes with me and makes statements without words. She is power and powerful. She is long, twisted, and tough. Dreadlocks, intertwined, intertwisted, black, gray, black-gray, irascible, seemingly invincible. She is poems and poetry. She punctuates without needing punctuation; exclaims without exclamation marks. She has attitude and sassiness. She is bold and also beautiful. She challenges assumptions and stereotypes; she defies explanation. And, she leaves impressions, long after she has walked and waltz out of the room and on to her next political platform.”
My reading draws to a close with “A Litany for Survival,” where she writes:
“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. (p. 283).
I remind myself:
“Blackwildgirl, it is better to speak. For you are still here. Still alive. Still with words. Still with words. Still with words that want so urgently and insistently to be written, to be spoken, to have impact.
So,Blackwildgirl, while you are here, let the words ring out, like peals of a bell. Let the words ring forth into the universe. Let the words ring forth like shooting stars, ring forth like blasts of thunder moving immovable mountains of oppression, upsetting the status quo; wreaking havoc; and like a tornado, twist and turn, stirring up and unearthing the buried jewels of wisdom and justice that yearn for the air of the universe, so they can finally breathe.”
On September 12, 2024, I write on the last page of the book:
“I want to fall asleep with Audre Lorde, actually herself, her words. I want to feel her presence, not just her spirit. I feel she would comfort me, wipe my tears away, hold me tight, assure me that my anger and grief have a purpose, that I can use them for good, for the people, like me, who suffer from the whiteness of words in male bodies and voices and faces, especially when the words pierce your humanity, but there is no blood, only the wetness of the waterfall of tears, like an avalanche that you hope, will stop, if not from exhaustion, perhaps because the reservoir of tears for this moment has been exhausted, and is being translated and transformed, like Audre Lorde encourages, from sadness and anger to activism and engagement.”
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Check out my new book: Dear Higher Education:
Dear Higher Education: Letters from the Social Justice Mountain speaks to a sociopolitical, legal, and cultural environment that seeks to erase, silence, and render invisible the work of social justice in higher education. Contributors representing a diversity of racial, gender, sexuality, and disability identities resist this erasure through personal letters, appealing to higher education to address head-on the challenges to institutional equity to fulfill its highest aspirations. Using a fluid digital conversation space, Dear Higher Education raises up the voices of those who have been laboring to make campus environments more diverse, equitable, and just.