Art is not living. It is the use of living.
Category Archive: Audre Lorde
Your silence will not protect you.
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.
When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.
But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Black women sharing close ties with each other, politically or emotionally, are not the enemies of Black men.