Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“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.”

Here, Lorde acknowledges the white male model of power that privileges thought over feeling, and she notes its inseparability from patriarchy and sexism. She encourages women to access the feeling part of themselves because that reservoir of emotional, nonrational knowledge is where there resides the possibility of liberation outside dominant models of power. Poetry translates emotional knowledge into language, idea, and action, so poetry is essential for women’s survival.

“We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid.” 

Lorde advocates for women to use their voices and speak up for themselves. Although silence has been a perceived safety mechanism, it has not guaranteed safety, nor has it diminished fear. Therefore, women might as well speak.

“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. 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.”

Lorde reiterates that silence will not do. She emphasizes that the ability to speak up for oneself is a learned practice, and it requires overcoming the hurdle of socialized silence. Women speaking up for themselves is the beginning of self-definition and giving language to imagined possibilities.

“It is the structure at the top which desires changelessness and which profits from these apparently endless kitchen wars.”

Here, Lorde suggests that anti-gay bias, heterosexism, and competition between women in the Black community only perpetuates racist and sexist oppression. Black women and men must embrace the differences among themselves, instead of seeing them as a threat, in order to work towards their common goal of overcoming racist and sexist oppression.

“Yet traditionally, Black women have always bonded together in support of each other, however uneasily and in the face of whatever other allegiances which militated against that bonding. We have bonded together with each other for wisdom and support, even when it was only in relationship to one man.” 

This quote refers to the tradition of woman-bonding in African and Black American societies. Lorde believes this tradition is significant because it serves as a model for Black women in the struggle against oppression and because traces of it remain within Black women despite the separation that has been fostered by oppressive structures. Remembering and honoring this tradition, then, is one of Lorde’s strategies for liberation.

“The dehumanizing denial of self is no less lethal than the dehumanization of racism to which it is so closely allied.”

This quote suggests that when Black people deny each other because of differences, they forsake their common goal to eradicate racism. In fact, it is a tactic of racist oppressors to separate Black people from themselves and each other. Thus, it is to Black people’s benefit to recognize the way that their rejection of each other serves their oppressors rather than themselves.

“And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.” 

Here, Lorde speaks of the function of the erotic in her life. Not only does it encourage her to demand that deep feeling, joy, and satisfaction from herself and all aspects of her life, but it also prompts her to only accept self-definition and identify her needs from within, rather than from external sources.

“We have too often been expected to be all things to all people and speak everyone else’s position but our own. Black men are not so passive that they must have Black women speak for them.”

Lorde speaks here about the expectation across American society for Black women to stretch, that is, to be preoccupied with their oppressor’s needs and concerns while having no tenderness or care for themselves. Lorde asserts that she and other Black women do not exist to feel or speak for Black men, so Black men must articulate for themselves their concerns regarding their identity, capitalism, racism, and Black Feminism. In addition, Black men’s expectation that Black women stretch for them is unjustifiable, considering that they misdirect their rage at Black women.

“The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries. To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well as our difference.”

Lorde acknowledges the difference and the sameness between white women and women and color. Because Daly has excluded the myths and histories of women of color, she implies that white women’s experience is the sum of all women’s experience. However, race impacts patriarchal violence. Thus, even though white women and women of color share experiences and goals as women, the differences cannot be ignored, either. Both must be considered in tandem.

“For each of us, the ability to feel strongly and to recognize those feelings is central: how to feel love, how to neither discount fear nor be overwhelmed by it, how to enjoy feeling deeply.”

This quote is in reference to what Lorde wishes to pass on to her son, how she wishes to teach him to survive. Although men are not encouraged to acknowledge or use their feelings under white male models of power, she wants her son to understand that he must feel and that women do not exist to feel for him. 

“When you share a common oppression you have certain additional weapons against each other because you’ve forged them in secret together against a common enemy. It’s a fear that I’m still not free of and that I remember all the time when I deal with other Black women: the fear of the ex-comrade.”

Lorde acknowledges the vulnerabilities shared between Black men and Black women and among Black women, as they have developed survival tools together against a common enemy. Knowledge of this vulnerability frightens Lorde because, as she articulates later in “Eye to Eye,” one of the survival tools that Black women share is the swallowing of anger. Because the anger goes unexpressed and is never directed at the actual source, it gets misdirected at other Black women. Lorde knows this, so she fears the ex-comrade, a Black woman, because Black women need each other but have always been denied each other.

“Rationality is not unnecessary. It serves the chaos of knowledge. It serves feeling. It serves to get from this place to that place. But if you don’t honor those places, then the road is meaningless. Too often, that’s what happens with the worship of rationality and that circular, academic, analytic thinking.”

Lorde explains that her emphasis on feeling does not mean that she is vilifying rationality. Rationality is necessary, but within models of power that privilege rationality and suppress feeling, there can be no true understanding because feeling is required for understanding. She sees both thought and feeling as dynamic, interdependent modes of knowledge.

“The only way we can do it is by creating another whole structure that touches every aspect of our existence, at the same time that we are resisting.”

Rather than working within oppressive structures to bring change, Lorde works to create entirely new structures. While the oppressed must acknowledge the conditions and structures of their oppression for survival—the resistance aspect—the way to bring about liberation and lasting change is to create something new.

“I urge each one of us here to reach down into the deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”

This quote illustrates that women’s fear and rejection of difference has been planted by oppressors. Thus, as a tool of racist patriarchy, the fear and rejection can never dismantle patriarchal oppression. Therefore, women—particularly heterosexual and white women—must introspect to unearth the source of those oppressive tools and understand how their personal choice to exclude and dismiss lesbians, bisexual women, and women of color is a political choice, as well.

“To examine Black women’s literature effectively requires that we be seen as whole people in our actual complexities—as individuals, as women, as human—rather than as one of those problematic but familiar stereotypes provided in this society in place of genuine images of Black women. And I believe this holds true for the literatures of other women of Color who are not Black.”

Here, Lorde addresses white and academic feminists’ exclusion and dismissal of the literature of women of color. Black women’s literature disrupts white women’s racialized notion of womanhood and forces them to acknowledge their own racism. Therefore, when white women avoid the literature of women of color, they avoid confrontation with their own racism.

“The angers between women will not kill us if we can articulate them with precision, if we listen to the content of what is said with at least as much intensity as we defend ourselves against the manner of saying.”

This quote addresses white women’s reactions to Black women’s anger—anger that is, for Lorde, an appropriate response to racism. Because white women justify their fear and dismissal of Black women’s angry expressions by focusing on the manner of delivery instead of the content, Lorde encourages white women to stop tone-policing and instead actually listen to what Black women are saying.

“But we must face with clarity and insight the lessons to be learned from the oversimplification of any struggle for self-awareness and liberation, or we will not rally the force we need to face the multidimensional threats to our survival in the 80s.”

Lorde emphasizes that there is no single, isolated issue in the fight for liberation; in reality, oppression is multifaceted and interconnected, and feuds within the Black community during the 1960s were fueled by inattention to this complexity. The reductive fixation on a single issue ultimately splintered and weakened the Black community, and the US government and white people exploited this splintering. For Lorde, activism in the 1980s must learn from its 1960s predecessors’ mistakes.

“The move to render the presence of lesbians and gay men invisible in the intricate fabric of Black existence and survival is a move which contributes to fragmentation and weakness in the Black community.” 

This quote re-emphasizes that the struggle for liberation is multidimensional. Just as Black Feminists address the specific concerns of Black women and remain interested in Black liberation, Black LGB persons can address concerns specific to them while remaining Black and interested in Black liberation. Therefore, when Black liberation efforts exclude lesbians and gay men from those efforts, it defeats Black liberation because Black liberation means all Black people.

“If I look at my most vulnerable places and acknowledge the pain I have felt, I can remove the source of that pain from my enemies’ arsenals. My history cannot be used to feather my enemies’ arrows then, and that lessens their power over me. Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me.”

Here, Lorde suggests the value of introspection that is integral to resisting oppression. Such introspection allows one to recognize what one has internalized from their oppressors and begin to eradicate these externally imposed beliefs and definitions. Thus, introspection, honesty, and committed self-scrutiny open space for the oppressed to accept themselves—and independently redefine themselves based on that acceptance.

“If we can learn to give ourselves the recognition and acceptance that we have come to expect only from our mommas, Black women will be able to see each other much more clearly and deal with each other much more directly.”

This is where Lorde introduces the suggestion of re-mothering for Black women. Black women find themselves in a complicated situation: No one else has loved them like their mothers, yet their mothers have passed on self-loathing and often self-defeating survival strategies. Re-mothering means offering oneself and other Black women the tenderness, love, and acceptance that their own mothers (and society at large) have withheld.

“I have to learn to love myself before I can love you or accept your loving. You have to learn to love yourself before you can love me or accept my loving. Know we are worthy of touch before we can reach out for each other.”

Re-mothering is how Black women begin to learn to love themselves, and it must start on a personal level. When people feel unworthy of love and acceptance, they reject it. Therefore, for Black women to love and accept one another, they each must love and accept themselves and heal from the self-hatred internalized from a racist, misogynist society.

“The ready acceptance by the majority of americans of the Grenadian invasion and of the shady US involvement in the events leading up to the assassination of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop both happen in an america whose moral and ethical fiber is weakened by racism as thoroughly as wood is weakened by dry rot. White america has been well-schooled in the dehumanization of Black people.”

Lorde touches on the entrenched, complex, systemic nature of racism. The personal and the political, as well as the local and global, are deeply intertwined. White American racism normalizes anti-Black violence, so it is easy for white Americans to accept or rationalize this racist violence when their government invades a Black country.

“But which one of us as a Black american has ever taken the time to examine this threat of socialism for any reality nearly as destructive as racism is within all our lives?”

Lorde questions Black Americans’ acceptance of the Grenada invasion, based on American media propaganda about socialism. She points out that among Black Americans, there is no real understanding of socialism, nor has there been any examination into its detriment, especially as it compares to the destructiveness of racism. This quote illustrates that Black Americans internalize the ideologies of America to the point that they would side with their oppressors’ violation against other Black people.