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

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coming to terms and using what she has learned, she shows us
things we can take with us in our struggles for survival, no matter
what our particular “worst” may be.
What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we
have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it?
Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who
can ever have power over me again?14
Audre Lorde asks no more of us than she does of herself: that we
pay attention to those voices we have been taught to distrust, that
we articulate what they teach us, that we act upon what we know.
Just as she develops themes, reworking and building on them over
time to create theory, so, too, can we integrate the material of our
lives.

Black woman, lesbian, feminist, mother of two children, daughter
of Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. The
essays and speeches in Sister Outsider give new resonance to that
fundamental but much abused feminist revelation that the personal
is political. We are all amplified by Audre Lorde’s work.
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.15
—NANCY K. BEREANO
December 1983

Notes from a Trip to Russia*
SINCE I’VE RETURNED from Russia a few weeks ago, I’ve been dreaming
a lot. At first I dreamt about Moscow every night. Sometimes my
lover and I had returned there; sometimes I would be in warmer,
familiar places I had visited; sometimes in different, unfamiliar
cities, cold, white, strange. In one dream, I was making love to a
woman behind a stack of clothing in Gumm’s Department Store in
Moscow. She was ill, and we went upstairs, where I said to a
matron, “We have to get her to the hospital.” The matron said, “All
right, you take her over there and tell them that she needs a kidney
scan and a brain scan …” And I said, “No, they’re not going to do
that for me.” And she looked at me very strangely and she said, “Of
course they will.” And I realized I was in Russia, and medicine and
doctor bills and all the rest of that are free.
My dreams don’t come every night anymore, but it seems as if
they’ve gotten deeper and deeper so that I awake not really
knowing any of the content of them but only knowing that I’ve just
dreamt about Russia again. For a while, in my dreams, Russia
became a mythic representation of that socialism which does not yet
exist anywhere I have been. The possibilities of living in Russia
seem very different in some respects, yet the people feel so Western
European (so American, really) outside of Tashkent. And the
afternoons in Moscow are so dark and gloomy.

I
The flight to Moscow was nine hours long, and from my
observations on the plane, Russians are generally as unfriendly to
each other as Americans are and just about as unhelpful.
There was a marvelously craggy-faced old blue-eyed woman in
her seventies wearing a babushka, with a huge coat roll. On the
plane everyone had one kind of huge coat roll or another except me.
When I stepped out into the Moscow weather I realized why. But
this woman was sitting in the seat right in front of me. She was
traveling alone and was too short to wield her roll easily. She tried
once, and she tried twice, and finally I got up and helped her. The
plane was packed: I’d never seen a plane quite so crowded before.
The old woman turned around and looked at me. It was obvious she
did not speak English because I had muttered something to her with
no reply. There was in her eyes a look of absolutely no rancor. I
thought with a quick shock how a certain tension in glances
between American Black and white people is taken for granted.
There was no thank you either, but there was a kind of simple
human response to who I was. And then as she turned to sit back
down, under her very dowdy cardigan I saw on her undersweater at
least three military-type medals, complete with chevrons. Hero of
the Republic medals, I learned later. Earned for hard work.
This is something that I noticed all over: the very old people in
Russia have a stamp upon them that I hope I can learn and never
lose, a matter-of-fact resilience and sense of their place upon the
earth that is very sturdy and reassuring.
I landed on September 10th about 3:30 P.M. Moscow time and
stepped out into a very raw, familiar greyness. There was a winter
smell to the air; almost nostalgic. The trees were Thanksgivingturned and the sky had that turkey-laden grey-pumpkin color. I saw
three large, square-faced women arm-in-arm, marching across the
airfield laughing and joking as they came. They were evidently
workers just going off shift — they had grey coveralls and jackets

with engineer caps and carried lunch buckets. They stopped beside a
truck that had paused and started beating against the closed
window, drawing the attention of the other woman inside with
some half-hello/half-joke at the driver, who was obviously their
buddy, because they all pointed fingers at each other laughing
uproariously together there on the Moscow airstrip in the grim light,
swinging their lunch pails and cutting up.
My Intourist guided name was Helen, a very pleasant and
attractive large-boned young woman in her thirties. She was born in
the East, near Japan, and her father, who’d been a military man,
was dead. She lived with her mother now, and she said that she and
her mother had to learn to do a lot of things for themselves since
there are so few men around these days and service is so hard to
get.
In Russia you carry your own bags in airports and hotels. This, at
first, struck me as oppressive because, of course, carrying a laden
bag up seven flights of stairs when the elevator isn’t working is not
fun. But the longer I stayed there the fairer it seemed, because in

coming to terms and using what she has learned, she shows us

things we can take with us in our struggles for survival, no matter

what our particular “worst” may be.

What is there possibly left for us to be afraid of, after we

have dealt face to face with death and not embraced it?

Once I accept the existence of dying as a life process, who

can ever have power over me again?14

Audre Lorde asks no more of us than she does of herself: that we

pay attention to those voices we have been taught to distrust, that

we articulate what they teach us, that we act upon what we know.

Just as she develops themes, reworking and building on them over

time to create theory, so, too, can we integrate the material of our

lives.

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

of Grenadian immigrants, educator, cancer survivor, activist. The

essays and speeches in Sister Outsider give new resonance to that

fundamental but much abused feminist revelation that the personal

is political. We are all amplified by Audre Lorde’s work.

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.15

—NANCY K. BEREANO

December 1983

Notes from a Trip to Russia*

SINCE I’VE RETURNED from Russia a few weeks ago, I’ve been dreaming

a lot. At first I dreamt about Moscow every night. Sometimes my

lover and I had returned there; sometimes I would be in warmer,

familiar places I had visited; sometimes in different, unfamiliar

cities, cold, white, strange. In one dream, I was making love to a

woman behind a stack of clothing in Gumm’s Department Store in

Moscow. She was ill, and we went upstairs, where I said to a

matron, “We have to get her to the hospital.” The matron said, “All

right, you take her over there and tell them that she needs a kidney

scan and a brain scan …” And I said, “No, they’re not going to do

that for me.” And she looked at me very strangely and she said, “Of

course they will.” And I realized I was in Russia, and medicine and

doctor bills and all the rest of that are free.

My dreams don’t come every night anymore, but it seems as if

they’ve gotten deeper and deeper so that I awake not really

knowing any of the content of them but only knowing that I’ve just

dreamt about Russia again. For a while, in my dreams, Russia

became a mythic representation of that socialism which does not yet

exist anywhere I have been. The possibilities of living in Russia

seem very different in some respects, yet the people feel so Western

European (so American, really) outside of Tashkent. And the

afternoons in Moscow are so dark and gloomy.

I

The flight to Moscow was nine hours long, and from my

observations on the plane, Russians are generally as unfriendly to

each other as Americans are and just about as unhelpful.

There was a marvelously craggy-faced old blue-eyed woman in

her seventies wearing a babushka, with a huge coat roll. On the

plane everyone had one kind of huge coat roll or another except me.

When I stepped out into the Moscow weather I realized why. But

this woman was sitting in the seat right in front of me. She was

traveling alone and was too short to wield her roll easily. She tried

once, and she tried twice, and finally I got up and helped her. The

plane was packed: I’d never seen a plane quite so crowded before.

The old woman turned around and looked at me. It was obvious she

did not speak English because I had muttered something to her with

no reply. There was in her eyes a look of absolutely no rancor. I

thought with a quick shock how a certain tension in glances

between American Black and white people is taken for granted.

There was no thank you either, but there was a kind of simple

human response to who I was. And then as she turned to sit back

down, under her very dowdy cardigan I saw on her undersweater at

least three military-type medals, complete with chevrons. Hero of

the Republic medals, I learned later. Earned for hard work.

This is something that I noticed all over: the very old people in

Russia have a stamp upon them that I hope I can learn and never

lose, a matter-of-fact resilience and sense of their place upon the

earth that is very sturdy and reassuring.

I landed on September 10th about 3:30 P.M. Moscow time and

stepped out into a very raw, familiar greyness. There was a winter

smell to the air; almost nostalgic. The trees were Thanksgivingturned and the sky had that turkey-laden grey-pumpkin color. I saw

three large, square-faced women arm-in-arm, marching across the

airfield laughing and joking as they came. They were evidently

workers just going off shift — they had grey coveralls and jackets

with engineer caps and carried lunch buckets. They stopped beside a

truck that had paused and started beating against the closed

window, drawing the attention of the other woman inside with

some half-hello/half-joke at the driver, who was obviously their

buddy, because they all pointed fingers at each other laughing

uproariously together there on the Moscow airstrip in the grim light,

swinging their lunch pails and cutting up.

My Intourist guided name was Helen, a very pleasant and

attractive large-boned young woman in her thirties. She was born in

the East, near Japan, and her father, who’d been a military man,

was dead. She lived with her mother now, and she said that she and

her mother had to learn to do a lot of things for themselves since

there are so few men around these days and service is so hard to

get.

In Russia you carry your own bags in airports and hotels. This, at

first, struck me as oppressive because, of course, carrying a laden

bag up seven flights of stairs when the elevator isn’t working is not

fun. But the longer I stayed there the fairer it seemed, because in