shalinialisha/ai-for-all · Datasets at Hugging Face

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Outsider is a reason for hope.
Audre Lorde’s writing is an impulse toward wholeness. What she
says and how she says it engages us both emotionally and
intellectually. She writes from the particulars of who she is: Black
woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter of
Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. She
creates material from the dailiness of her life that we can use to help
shape ours. Out of her desire for wholeness, her need to encompass
and address all the parts of herself, she teaches us about the
significance of difference—“that raw and powerful connection from
which our personal power is forged.”3
A white Jewish lesbian mother, I first read “Man Child: A Black
Lesbian Feminist’s Response” several years ago as I was struggling
to accept the inevitability of my prepubescent son’s eventual
manhood. Not only would this boy of mine become a man
physically, but he might act like one. This awareness turned into a

major crisis for me at a time and place when virtually all the lesbian
mothers I knew (who I realized, with hindsight, were also white)
either insisted that their “androgynous” male children would stay
that way, would not grow up to be sexist/misogynist men, or were
pressured to choose between a separatist vision of community and
their sons. I felt trapped by a narrow range of options.
Lorde, however, had wider vision. She started with the reality of
her child’s approaching manhood (“Our sons will not grown into
women”4) and then asked what kind of man he would become. She
saw clearly that she could both love her son fiercely and let him go.
In fact, for their mutual survival, she had no choice but to let him
go, to teach him that she “did not exist to do his feeling for him.”5
Lorde and I are both lesbian mothers who have had to teach our
boys to do their own emotional work. But her son Jonathan is Black
and my son Joshua is white and that is not a trivial difference in a
racist society, despite their common manhood. As Lorde has written
elsewhere:
Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You
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 upon the reasons they are dying.6
I read “Man Child,” and it was one of those occasions when I can
remember something major shifting inside me.
I came to understand it was not merely that Lorde knew more
about raising sons than I did, although I had been given expert
advice. I realized how directly Lorde’s knowledge was tied to her
difference—those realities of Blackness and lesbianism that placed
her outside the dominant society. She had information that I, a
white woman who had lived most of my life in a middle-class
heterosexual world, did not have, information I could use,
information I needed.

For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is
as american as apple pie have always had to be watchers …7
I was ashamed by my arrogance, frightened that my ignorance
would be exposed, and ultimately excited by the possibilities
becoming available to me. I made a promise to my future to try and
listen to those voices, in others and in myself, that knew what they
knew precisely because they were different. I wanted to hear what
they had to tell me.
Of course, the reverberations continue.
When I read “Man Child” again several years later, having done a
lot of work reclaiming my Jewish identity in the interim, I thought
about the complexities of my son being a white Jewish man in a
white Christian society. I had not seen this as an issue the first time
around; it is hard now to reconstruct my shortsightedness.
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.8
There is a further reduction of the distance between feeling and
thinking as we become aware of Lorde’s internal process. We watch
her move from “the chaos of knowledge … that dark and true depth
within each of us that nurtures vision”9 to “the heretical actions that
our dreams imply.”10 Understanding—the figuring out and piecing
together, the moving from one place to the next, provides the
connections.
What understanding begins to do is to make knowledge
available for use, and that’s the urgency, that’s the push,
that’s the drive.11
Movement is intentional and life-sustaining.
Nowhere is this intentionality more evident than in “The
Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” Here Lorde

grapples with a possible diagnosis of cancer. “I had the feeling,
probably a body sense, that life was never going to be the
same….”12 She deals in public, at an academic gathering, in front of
700 women. She tells us that she is afraid but that silence is not a
protection.
And it [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. It is very good for
establishing perspective.13
Lorde’s commitment to confront the worst so that she is freed to
experience the best is unshakeable. Although Sister Outsider spans
almost a decade of her work, nine of the fifteen pieces in this book
were written in the two years following Lorde’s discovery that she
might have/did have cancer. In the process of her growth, her

Outsider is a reason for hope.

Audre Lorde’s writing is an impulse toward wholeness. What she

says and how she says it engages us both emotionally and

intellectually. She writes from the particulars of who she is: Black

woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter of

Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. She

creates material from the dailiness of her life that we can use to help

shape ours. Out of her desire for wholeness, her need to encompass

and address all the parts of herself, she teaches us about the

significance of difference—“that raw and powerful connection from

which our personal power is forged.”3

A white Jewish lesbian mother, I first read “Man Child: A Black

Lesbian Feminist’s Response” several years ago as I was struggling

to accept the inevitability of my prepubescent son’s eventual

manhood. Not only would this boy of mine become a man

physically, but he might act like one. This awareness turned into a

major crisis for me at a time and place when virtually all the lesbian

mothers I knew (who I realized, with hindsight, were also white)

either insisted that their “androgynous” male children would stay

that way, would not grow up to be sexist/misogynist men, or were

pressured to choose between a separatist vision of community and

their sons. I felt trapped by a narrow range of options.

Lorde, however, had wider vision. She started with the reality of

her child’s approaching manhood (“Our sons will not grown into

women”4) and then asked what kind of man he would become. She

saw clearly that she could both love her son fiercely and let him go.

In fact, for their mutual survival, she had no choice but to let him

go, to teach him that she “did not exist to do his feeling for him.”5

Lorde and I are both lesbian mothers who have had to teach our

boys to do their own emotional work. But her son Jonathan is Black

and my son Joshua is white and that is not a trivial difference in a

racist society, despite their common manhood. As Lorde has written

elsewhere:

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You

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 upon the reasons they are dying.6

I read “Man Child,” and it was one of those occasions when I can

remember something major shifting inside me.

I came to understand it was not merely that Lorde knew more

about raising sons than I did, although I had been given expert

advice. I realized how directly Lorde’s knowledge was tied to her

difference—those realities of Blackness and lesbianism that placed

her outside the dominant society. She had information that I, a

white woman who had lived most of my life in a middle-class

heterosexual world, did not have, information I could use,

information I needed.

For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is

as american as apple pie have always had to be watchers …7

I was ashamed by my arrogance, frightened that my ignorance

would be exposed, and ultimately excited by the possibilities

becoming available to me. I made a promise to my future to try and

listen to those voices, in others and in myself, that knew what they

knew precisely because they were different. I wanted to hear what

they had to tell me.

Of course, the reverberations continue.

When I read “Man Child” again several years later, having done a

lot of work reclaiming my Jewish identity in the interim, I thought

about the complexities of my son being a white Jewish man in a

white Christian society. I had not seen this as an issue the first time

around; it is hard now to reconstruct my shortsightedness.

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.8

There is a further reduction of the distance between feeling and

thinking as we become aware of Lorde’s internal process. We watch

her move from “the chaos of knowledge … that dark and true depth

within each of us that nurtures vision”9 to “the heretical actions that

our dreams imply.”10 Understanding—the figuring out and piecing

together, the moving from one place to the next, provides the

connections.

What understanding begins to do is to make knowledge

available for use, and that’s the urgency, that’s the push,

that’s the drive.11

Movement is intentional and life-sustaining.

Nowhere is this intentionality more evident than in “The

Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” Here Lorde

grapples with a possible diagnosis of cancer. “I had the feeling,

probably a body sense, that life was never going to be the

same….”12 She deals in public, at an academic gathering, in front of

700 women. She tells us that she is afraid but that silence is not a

protection.

And it [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. It is very good for

establishing perspective.13

Lorde’s commitment to confront the worst so that she is freed to

experience the best is unshakeable. Although Sister Outsider spans

almost a decade of her work, nine of the fifteen pieces in this book

were written in the two years following Lorde’s discovery that she

might have/did have cancer. In the process of her growth, her