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Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Audre Lorde

4.53 · Rating details · 18,803 ratings · 1,328 reviews

A collection of fifteen essays written between 1976 and 1984 gives clear voice to Audre Lorde's literary and philosophical personae. These essays explore and illuminate the roots of Lorde's intellectual development and her deep-seated and longstanding concerns about ways of increasing empowerment among minority women writers and the absolute necessity to explicate the conc ...more

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Paperback, 190 pages

Published June 1st 1984 by Crossing Press

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Mar 13, 2018 Thomas rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, feminism, favorites, own-physical, lgbtq, five-stars

If you care about feminism, social justice, or making the world a better place in any way at all, you must read this book. Sister Outsider shook me to my core. Audre Lorde's brilliant, powerful, love-filled writing literally brought me to tears in a local Panera Bread. In this stunning collection of essays and speeches, she addresses the sheer necessity of intersectional feminism and supporting women of color, the importance of using our voices to speak up against injustice, the horrors inflicte If you care about feminism, social justice, or making the world a better place in any way at all, you must read this book. Sister Outsider shook me to my core. Audre Lorde's brilliant, powerful, love-filled writing literally brought me to tears in a local Panera Bread. In this stunning collection of essays and speeches, she addresses the sheer necessity of intersectional feminism and supporting women of color, the importance of using our voices to speak up against injustice, the horrors inflicted by US imperialism and capitalism, and more. I knew about halfway through reading this book that it would serve as one of my absolute favorite reads and feminist works of all time. I marked several passages from each essay, so I wish I could share so many of them in this review, but for the sake of brevity, first, an iconic passage about how we must stand in solidarity with everyone who faces oppression, not just those who look like us:

"I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university. If their full bellies make me fail to recognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose children do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children because her insides are rotted from home abortions and sterilization; if I fail to recognize the lesbian who chooses not to have children, the woman who remains closeted because her homophobic community is her only life support, the woman who chooses silence instead of another death, the woman who is terrified lest my anger trigger the explosion of hers; if I fail to recognize them as other faces of myself, then I am contributing not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or for further separation. I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you."

Let me just tell you some of the glorious feats Lorde accomplishes in this collection. She rightfully calls out white women for their racism and upholding of patriarchy, black men for their misogyny and homophobia, and all of us for the oppression we internalize and project onto others. She reclaims female sexuality as a weapon against patriarchy and for self-love. She centers the experiences of black women, including lesbian black women, with no apologies. Lorde does all of this and more with a voice that is wise, soulful, commanding, and kind, somehow all at once. Her writing acts as both a sword and a salve, tearing through layers and layers of racism, sexism, and discrimination while offering a healing path for us to follow. Another passage I love, this one about the importance of feeling, a trait that is undervalued in a male-dominated society:

"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. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to speak and to dare... For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt - of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 A.M., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead - while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths."

It is a true tragedy that Lorde is not required reading for everyone, everywhere. At the same time, I feel so grateful for Lorde's revelatory ideas and her beautiful delivery. As a beginning therapist, I believe it is of utmost importance to both honor our emotions and change our actions to better our mental health, all while working toward social justice. Lorde accomplishes all of these things. She sits with the dark, destructive emotions brought on by experiencing racism and prejudice, while celebrating the joyful feelings of black lesbian womanhood and of liberation overall. In addition, she provides tangible strategies to fight for a better, more just and loving world. I cannot praise this collection enough. I will just say that it is one of my favorite books ever and please please read it. I will end this review with one more quote that exemplifies her penchant for calling us to action:

"How are you practicing what you preach - whatever you preach, and who exactly is listening? As Malcolm stressed, we are not responsible for our oppression, but we must be responsible for our own liberation. It is not going to be easy but we have what we learned and what we have been given that is useful. We have the power those who came before us have given us, to move beyond the place they were standing. We have the trees, and water, and sun, and our children. Malcolm X does not live in the dry texts of his words as we read them; he lives in the energy we generate and use to move along the visions we share with him. We are making the future as well as bonding to survive the enormous pressures of the present, and that is what it means to be a part of history." ...more

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Jun 08, 2014 Zanna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: feminism, 500gbw, poetry, favourites, philosophy

There is something spellbinding about reading this book, as though one had stepped into a room where someone was speaking, quietly and clearly, and a crowd of people were listening intently, feeling together in mutual awareness and sympathy. It must be because I know so many women have read this book and felt their hearts answer Lorde. It must be because she is a poet and creates with words that space within us, that bridge where separate senses of being can cross and touch.

Perhaps the spell of ...more

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Feb 06, 2008 Tim Haslett rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Toni

Now wait, you've not read this book? Really? Maybe you're just kidding. "I have come to work on you like a drug or a chisel" wrote the late Audre Lorde. Her passing created a hollow space in my soul that is now filled again each time I read her prose & poetry.

Just because 'Sister Outsider' is assigned in virtually every women's studies and gender studies 101 class does not mean it is some awful book about soggy, liberal bureaucratic multiculturalism. Far from it.

Audre Lorde lived for a radical ...more

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Jun 18, 2020 Cinzia DuBois rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourite-books

I cannot express how much I fell in love with Audre.
This is genuinely one of my favourite books of all time, a claim I haven't laid on a book in quite some time (perhaps over a year now? Maybe longer!)

The extent of the notes I took during reading is immense. Her pages are plastered with sticky tabs and margin crawling. Everything about her writing is majestic and phenomenally intelligent.

I've come out of this book feeling like I spent the past few days in silence, holding hands with a poet as ...more

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Jun 22, 2014 Aubrey rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Aubrey by: Zanna

Shelves: queer-as-in, pure-power-of-gr, person-of-reality, reality-check, person-of-everything, 5-star, non-fiction, 500-wm, think-think-think, 1-read-on-hand

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change. To those women here who fear the anger of women of Color more than their own unscrutinized racist attitudes, I ask: Is the anger of women of Color more threatening than the woman-hatred that tinges all aspects of our lives?

My latest favorite type of Tumblr blog is a variation on the theme of 'thisisnot_____', wherein a slew of responses to angry white tears let me kno

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change. To those women here who fear the anger of women of Color more than their own unscrutinized racist attitudes, I ask: Is the anger of women of Color more threatening than the woman-hatred that tinges all aspects of our lives?

My latest favorite type of Tumblr blog is a variation on the theme of 'thisisnot_____', wherein a slew of responses to angry white tears let me know I'm on the right track. You see, I am in need of practice when it comes to differentiating the emotions of violation and annoyance, the situations of prejudice and hegemony, the fundamental difference between the reactions evoked by the 'ItAintRape' tag and when people of color call my group 'crackers' and 'mayo'. Neither religion nor common sense gives me what is required to develop my feminism beyond its white feminism mainstream of white supremacism, and if I am at times uncomfortable, well. I know the oppression begotten by believing my safe spaces should be able to intersect completely and utterly with everyone else's, for what is privilege if not speaking and knowing beyond a doubt you will be heard? There is also the matter that, as long as I have been at this, I have not yet found a discomfort comparable to my episodes of major depressive disorder. In a word, priorities, with no small amount of self-awareness to make the effort sustainable.

When an academic woman says, “I can’t afford it,” she may mean she is making a choice about how to spend her available money. But when a woman on welfare says, “I can’t afford it,” she means she is surviving on an amount of money that was barely subsistence in 1972, and she often does not have enough to eat. Yet the National Women’s Studies Association here in 1981 holds a conference in which it commits itself to responding to racism, yet refuses to waive the registration fee for poor women and women of Color who wished to present and conducted workshops. This has made it impossible for many women of Color — for instance, Wilmette Brown, of Black women for Wages for Housework — to participate in this conference. Is this to be merely another case of the academy discussing life within the closed circuits of the academy?

There is a living here that is not for me, save for when I wish to inform myself as inexorably as possible without invading safe spaces with the trauma induced by my white skin, the submission inculcated by my military industrial complexion. What was once solely a defect of social anxiety has become a boon in the realms of intersectionality, as my offline personality takes in the development of my online persona and parses out what it is dehumanizing from what is merely guilt. Indeed, offline existence has almost become a respite, so used am I to anger directed at all that I represent for every justifiable reason. Compared to the fury I've read in Tumblr posts, this work barely scrapes the surface of a twinge with its love, its eloquence, its call for community and lack of implication that all white people in the US should go back to Europe. In that, the danger is not backtracking out of annoyance but appropriating out of a false sense of welcome, so it is fortunate that I came to this already knowing better.

For white women there is a wider range of pretended choices and rewards for identifying with patriarchal power and its tools.

When patriarchy dismisses us, it encourages our murderers. When radical lesbian feminist theory dismisses us, it encourages its own demise.

What is this social justice I speak of? Is it a mockery? Is it a hating of whites? Is it perhaps post-menstrual syndrome, a time when a cis-gendered woman's body comes as close in testosterone level to those with which the cis-gendered male's body operates every time, all the time? Is it my neuroatypicality, a fancy word of self-empowerment that simply means that, by the standards of society, I am not considered sane. As a writer, I hone my craft on bleeding my feelings into my pen and keyboard, and those feelings are rarely kind, never peaceful, and every so often disinter themselves from the breed that shoots up schools and rains down drones. As a white woman, social justice is the art of inherent power as propagated towards the self and pressed upon the other, an art that will ask 'who' and 'how' and 'why' and say, above all else, 'no'. Sometime in the future, a 'yes' may be possible when the Chapel Hill shooting's status as a hegemonic hate crime is not birthed in limbo, when white women stop diagnosing the choices of black women in order to 'help', when I no longer have to choose the lesser evil of academia over the greater one of the drug industry in order to fulfill my socioeconomic quota with doing what I love. Until then, readers who are white, do not infantilize this work with unconditional acceptance and utter lack of self-reflexivity. Do so, and you whitewash this narrative into policed gentrification, and that is a fucking disgrace.

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. It is not the anger of Black women which corrodes into blind, dehumanizing power, bent upon the annihilation of us all unless we meet it with what we have, our power to examine and to redefine the terms upon which we will live and work; our power to envision and to reconstruct, anger by painful anger, stone upon heavy stone, a future of pollinating differences and the earth to support our choices.

Priorities, people. Priorities. ...more

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Jul 01, 2020 Cheryl rated it it was amazing

Shelves: women-and-books, non-fiction, literary-essays, afro-american, 2020-reads

In her essay, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Audre Lorde quotes Simone de Beauvoir: "It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting."

Audre Lorde wrote about the genuine conditions of her life. She was a single mother. She was a black woman. A lesbian. A feminist. An educator. A poet. A daughter of immigrants. A cancer survivor. Her essays contextualize what is happening in the world r In her essay, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Audre Lorde quotes Simone de Beauvoir: "It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting."

Audre Lorde wrote about the genuine conditions of her life. She was a single mother. She was a black woman. A lesbian. A feminist. An educator. A poet. A daughter of immigrants. A cancer survivor. Her essays contextualize what is happening in the world right now and this collection simply enriched my life in the short weeks I spent with it.

I enjoyed how candidly she wrote, enjoyed the strength and courage emanating from her words. She was an agent for change and I think she would be marching and speaking against police violence today if she was still alive.

In "Age, Race Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference" Lorde addresses the importance of recognizing the oppression of women while also recognizing the differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. She discusses the absence of the literature of women of color in literature and women studies courses, even listing the work of women whose work had been trivialized, like Angelina Grimke, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Lorraine Hansberry. She writes this and it sounds as if she were writing it now: "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."

In "Poetry is Not a Luxury," she writes about poetry as illumination, a way of bringing experience and feelings to the page: "we can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so that they can be shared."

In "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action" she addresses fear and those insecurities that make some hide from the truth, stating profoundly: "for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken."

In "An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich" the conversation is rich and inviting. Lorde speaks openly about her vulnerabilities as a writer, feeling "inarticulate, inscrutable, terrified to speak" and yet realizing that she could not put "weapons of silence" in her "enemies' hands." I enjoyed the ease with which she was able to correct her friend, Adrienne Rich, regarding perceptions, and still continue with intellectual dialogue.

In "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism" she discusses the "anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence..." She says: "when women of color speak out of anger that laces so many of our contacts with white women, we are often told that we are 'creating a mood of helplessness' or 'standing in the way of trusting communication and action.' " I liked how she spoke of anger as pain but also as survival mechanism; anger as a weapon of the oppressed. ...more

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Jul 12, 2019 Lucy Dacus rated it it was amazing

One of the greatest books of all time by one of the most brilliant minds of all time.

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Feb 19, 2019 Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: feminist, lgbt, essay-collections, 2019, blm, nonfiction

Sister Outsider was a really fantastic introduction to Audre Lorde for me, though its episodic nature isn't my favorite way to digest nonfiction and I think I would have preferred to stay on track with any one of these essays for a hundred pages rather than to bounce around from topic to topic the way this collection is structured (though all pieces are obviously interconnected to an extent). But still, this is a sharp and insightful and seminal work that I'd recommend. ...more

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Feb 14, 2015 Claire rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, feminism, classic, essays, african-american-women-writers, 500-great-books-by-women

Audre Lorde was a poet, academic, speaker, feminist activist, sister and mother of two, who grew up in 1930’s Harlem. She wrote 12 books and tragically passed away at the age of 58 from cancer in 1992.

I’ve had her collection of essays Sister Outsider on my list of books I wanted to read for a few years, I came across it after reading an article or blog post that put it at or near the top of books one should read if interested in feminism, gender, equality. They are the kind of books that those w ...more

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Jun 09, 2020 ✨ jamieson ✨ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, feminist, 2020-reads, lgbtqiap, non-fiction

"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him his own game, but they will never enable us to bring genuine change"

My first foray into Audre Lorde outside of the odd extract read in university and I loved it. This is absolutely essential reading for intersectional feminism, queer theory, Black Lesbian lit and just race/class/gender commentary. It is alarming how recent some of the issues Lorde brings up feel, not much has maybe chan ...more

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Oct 01, 2020 Kevin Shepherd rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: biography, reviewed, lgbtq, race-social-justice, own, feminist-studies, history, non-fiction, politics

“Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness.” ~Nancy K. Bereano, December 1983

One of the great gifts of reading, if you do it long enough, and hard enough, is that you have a greater awareness of all there is that you do not know. Lorde is, herself, a conveyer of such gifts. This brilliant, Black, lesbian, feminist poet brings to light an abundance of disparities between what is our perception and what is her rea “Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness.” ~Nancy K. Bereano, December 1983

One of the great gifts of reading, if you do it long enough, and hard enough, is that you have a greater awareness of all there is that you do not know. Lorde is, herself, a conveyer of such gifts. This brilliant, Black, lesbian, feminist poet brings to light an abundance of disparities between what is our perception and what is her reality; not to build walls, but to tear them down.

What makes her a National Treasure is not just what she says, but also how she says it. ‘Sister Outsider’ bridges that gap between poetry and prose, occupying that space somewhere between heart and mind - it is both and it is neither.

“Advocating the mere tolerance of difference... is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. Only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate...”

Lorde died of cancer in November, 1992. She was 58 years old. I feel what can be said of Sylvia Plath and Christopher Hitchens can most certainly be said of Audre Lorde; we are all a little worse for the loss.

“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 are not goddesses or matriarchs or edifices of divine forgiveness; we are not fiery fingers of judgement or instruments of flagellation; we are women forced back always upon our women’s power. 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.” ...more

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Mar 16, 2008 Rachel rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: you will probably think this book sucks

the bible just not doing it for ya? feel disappointed by the christian science monitor? maybe not getting the guidance you need from the koran or buddha... this shit is a new religion- all the spiritual guidance you'll ever need. well. it's fucking good and smart and amazing and no good feminist worth their (gender unspecific) salt would go without referencing lorde.

the uses of the erotic, some notes and master's tools are absolute requirements if you don't wanna do the whole thing. oh. and, um ...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Emily Mac Rae rated it it was amazing

This book was amazing. At times I look at the world and it's inequities and it makes me feel as if I am losing my mind. How can you look at the hurt and pain caused by the imbalance of power, the squandering of vital resources, pride exercised by the complete put down of whole groups of people and not want to scream. At the very least do some one thing to help the starving person next to you. I sometimes feel that I live in a world where many suffer but many more walk around as if they were anes ...more

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Sep 02, 2020 Lily Herman rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I don't think there's really much left to say about Audre Lorde (especially by me, a random ass white lady). I'll just say that there's a reason that Audre Lorde is Audre Lorde, and if you ever need proof of that, just read Sister Outsider.

I don't think you can read anything by Lorde and not furiously scribble down what she's telling you, so here's one of my favorite quotes from this collection: “There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.”

Audre Lorde makes you feel them ...more

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Jul 30, 2019 Noria rated it it was amazing

Shelves: memoirs, read-in-2019, feminism, enjoyed, non-fiction, homophobia, essential-conversations, lgbt-voices, racism

Nobody has the power quite like Audre to have you sit with her thoughts, argue them out with her, disagree, get angry that you're disagreeing because she has already called you out on it in her essay and then have you walk away, only to come back, calm and ready to learn at the hands of a woman with a brilliant mind, a way of breaking down her theories and thoughts in the clearest, most concise, most unflinching and most vulnerable way possible and the desire to have the world and most important ...more

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Jan 27, 2014 Steph rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 500-women, first-read-in-2014, lgbtqiap, stories-essays-speeches, fem-theory-cultural-studies, love-the-title, whoa-knowledge, nonfiction, favorites-2014, poc-author

Oh, this book. Such a brilliant collection of essays, I won't even try to write a proper review. I'll just leave a quote from the essay The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism. This quote sums up what feminism is all about for me.

I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university. If their full bellies make me fail to recognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose children do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children becaus
...more

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Aug 30, 2015 Imani ♥ ☮ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016, memoirorautobio, africanamerican-black, femwomanist, summer2k16, nonfic

I wavered back and forth for a good minute, trying to figure out if I would give this a four star rating or a five star rating. I resolved for five, just because I liked some of the essays more than others. All of them were stunning, but I especially liked Eye to Eye and her account on Moscow, Grenada and raising a black son as a black lesbian.

Audre Lorde has been like a haunt to me in some ways. A name I never felt I could pronounce properly. A name I heard but never read. A book written by a ...more

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Dec 14, 2016 Erika rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: essays, 20th-century, non-fiction, own-paperback, read2016

This is quite possibly the most important book I've read all year.

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Jan 27, 2018 Mehrsa rated it it was amazing

What beautiful prose and so relevant. I've heard Audre Lorde quotes batted around all over the place and it was wonderful to read them in context. Unlike Lorde, I prefer prose to poetry (at least at this point in my life) so I really appreciated a poet talking about politics and life. Her essay on absorbing the hatred of racism as a child was really moving and one that I will return to.

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Dec 27, 2015 El rated it it was amazing

Shelves: anarchism-revolutions, read-in-a-blink, cultural-studies-and-other, hear-me-roar-and-gender

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.
p142, "Learning from the 60s"

I read this right on the tail of reading Zami: A New

You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.
p142, "Learning from the 60s"

I read this right on the tail of reading Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, which I loved. I wasn't sure what to expect since this is a collection of speeches and essays written between 1976 and 1984. I wondered if I would find it relevant today.

Hoo, boy, did I.

There's nothing in Lorde's words that don't resonate with readers (unless their heads and hearts are completely closed and/or missing entirely) even today. The problem is that means all the issues Lorde wrote about still exist. I would love to be able to read this and say "Well, it's so great we don't have to worry about these old-time-thingies!" but that hasn't happened yet, and I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Lorde wrote with conviction. She didn't hide her anger, and in fact she offered up the fact that she was angry. But where some people lose their bleeping minds when they get all angry, Lorde never did. She was angry, and she wanted to see things change, but she didn't have unrealistic or unattainable actions for how to accomplish that.

I don't want to hear from anyone that they couldn't get something out of this because they're "not black" or "not a lesbian" or "not a mother" or anything else. Everyone can benefit from reading Audre Lorde. Truly inspiring.
In america, [the mythical norm] is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside the power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing.
p116, "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference"

...more

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May 28, 2020 Kevin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: theory-gender

Lorde was foundational to intersectionality, along with Angela Y. Davis (Women, Race, and Class).

The Good:
--The most striking essays to me are Lorde’s (often directly personal) reflections on dealing with non-intersectional feminism, other black women, and being a black lesbian mother while raising a boy. It seems clear that those who share closer experiences can instantly unlock vaults of memories and understanding from brief passages; for certain gulfs, all I can do is be receptive and appreci Lorde was foundational to intersectionality, along with Angela Y. Davis (Women, Race, and Class).

The Good:
--The most striking essays to me are Lorde’s (often directly personal) reflections on dealing with non-intersectional feminism, other black women, and being a black lesbian mother while raising a boy. It seems clear that those who share closer experiences can instantly unlock vaults of memories and understanding from brief passages; for certain gulfs, all I can do is be receptive and appreciate the differences.
--What made me most excited to explore Lorde’s works was her influence on global/Third-World feminism. There are glimpses of this as the collection starts with Lorde’s visit to Soviet Russia, and ends with her visit to her familial roots of Grenada (post-US invasion). Her critiques of US imperialism/neocolonialism (military and economic terror to enforce ideal conditions for US corporations' global division of labor, as well as racism against black and other coloured self-determination and progress) are brief but on point!
…This is what separates Lorde (and Angela Davis, i.e. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle) from those who focus exclusively on domestic US issues and fail to connect with the empire’s global presence.

The Missing:
--It’s always tricky reviewing early writings on transformative ideas; it doesn’t help that several essays collected are already brief to begin with.
--Detailed structural analysis of Third-World feminism/global capitalism/global division of labor (to elaborate on Lorde's "Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people") will have to be found elsewhere. I need to finish Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity; the dense academic writing requires an accessible edition for a wider audience.
...Also excited for Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentring Oppression, which does have an accessible edition: Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto. ...more

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Apr 08, 2017 Barbara (The Bibliophage) rated it really liked it

Shelves: feminism-and-women-s-studies, audio, 2017, own, social-justice, diverse-authors, own-digital

Sister Outsider was originally compiled in 1984 from poet Audre Lorde's speeches and essays. I listened to the audiobook produced in 2016, and narrated by Robin Eller. Let's get my critique of the audio out of the way - it was deplorable. Lorde's passionate and insightful words are ruined by narration that's closer to automaton than human. Buy the print version, as I will be doing soon.

That frustration aside, this book is a powerful work. Lorde's experiences as a black, feminist, lesbian mother Sister Outsider was originally compiled in 1984 from poet Audre Lorde's speeches and essays. I listened to the audiobook produced in 2016, and narrated by Robin Eller. Let's get my critique of the audio out of the way - it was deplorable. Lorde's passionate and insightful words are ruined by narration that's closer to automaton than human. Buy the print version, as I will be doing soon.

That frustration aside, this book is a powerful work. Lorde's experiences as a black, feminist, lesbian mother of two afford her a valuable perspective. For me, one of the most affecting essays was when she talked about black women failing to connect with and support other black women. While much of this was specific to the black woman's experience, I thought many points applied to all women.

"If I participate, knowingly or otherwise, in my sister's oppression and she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only blankets the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy. And yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman's voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself have contributed.”

Lorde describes white privilege and oppression so strongly. Her essays were a profound extension of the recent reading I've done (Malcolm X, Ralph Ellison, Congressman John Lewis, and Janet Mock).

“The way you get people to testify against themselves is not to have police tactics and oppressive techniques. What you do is build it in so people learn to distrust everything in themselves that has not been sanctioned, to reject what is most creative in themselves to begin with, so you don’t even need to stamp it out.”

I loved her essay, Manchild, about raising a black son from an interracial lesbian household in a racist world. She also shares some precious and gut-wrenching moments of watching her daughter adjust to life on her own.

Lastly, Lorde's essay about the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada makes points about the politics of aggression which continue to be valid today. I happened to listen to it in a two-day period where the U.S. twice made aggressive moves towards non-white countries. I wonder what Lorde would say about the military events of the last 20 years?

“What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope.”

Meaningful as this all is, the quote that hit me the most was this one:

“Tell them about how you’re never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there’s always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don’t speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.”

Read these essays for a unique voice, which is well worth your time. ...more

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Sep 12, 2020 Megan O'Hara rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: my-big-fat-catalogue

a 190 page salve for the goddamn soul

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Apr 10, 2019 Dominic rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfic, feminism

I'm shook. While I've read several of these essays in my college days (and beyond), finally reading this iconic collection in its entirety is to fully understand the scope of Audre Lorde's goodness, her vulnerability and her warrior-queer-rebel genius. I have not read any full poetry collections from Lorde, but I really damn well should, because Lorde may be one of the most visionary revolutionaries I've ever read.

What impresses me most about Lorde is how she can incite action while making room I'm shook. While I've read several of these essays in my college days (and beyond), finally reading this iconic collection in its entirety is to fully understand the scope of Audre Lorde's goodness, her vulnerability and her warrior-queer-rebel genius. I have not read any full poetry collections from Lorde, but I really damn well should, because Lorde may be one of the most visionary revolutionaries I've ever read.

What impresses me most about Lorde is how she can incite action while making room in the revolution for everyone. A repeated motif throughout these essays and speeches is that our differences make us stronger. Rather than shoot out a cliche aphorism, though, Lorde probes and refuses to give into complacency. As she makes clear over and over, people are dying; there is no time but now. She doesn't let anyone off easy; her words are honest and blunt and raw.

Although most of these writings are from the late 70s and early 80s, they are incredibly timeless. This isn't a text to read for a historical perspective on feminism "back-in-the-day." Lorde's wisdom feels as relevant today as ever before—we need to be discussing these ideas and how they can help heal wounds and stir up resistance. This is rage couched with a belief that people can come together and connect. It's inspiring that someone who faced racism, sexism and homophobia so constantly could armor herself with such hope and resilience and courage. That's the power of poetry, y'all. (There are plenty of fightin' words here as well.)

Although she is quoted in the introduction, saying, "I'm a poet [;] I don't write theory," it turns out that Lorde is the very BEST kind of theorist because she doesn't just describe how things are but how we can envision it to be. And Lorde's vision is so generous! My favourite quote can be found on page 43, from "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action":

Where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own."

I adore that insight. It challenges me to continue to learn about and read about difference. It reinforces the fact that I have learned so many things from people whose perspective is far different from mind. I love that she says this is our "responsibility" to listen. Anyone who says our differences mean that we can't learn from another or interact with another or fight alongside one another is one of those tools of the Master's house. And we don't need to be listening to that.

Thank you, Audre Lorde, for your words, which are a true blessing to me. ...more

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Jun 25, 2017 Viv JM rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: z-2017-author-female, audio, essay, feminism, rt-challenge-jun-17, author-female, non-fiction, read-in-2017

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a black lesbian feminist poet and “Sister Outsider” is a collection of her essays and speeches dating from 1976 to 1984. These are largely on themes of sexism, racism and homophobia and Lorde is not afraid to express her anger. Reading these essays 40 years later feels a little bit depressing as although a lot has changed there is so much more that hasn’t.

I did find this at times an uncomfortable read, and I think that is wholly a good thing. It feels like a really i ...more

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May 14, 2020 Camryn rated it it was amazing

I truly felt like she sees and understands me.

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Sep 13, 2020 Anna Luce rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: good-reads, ebooks, did-not-review, nonfiction

“Your silence will not protect you.”

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Jul 03, 2015 Xian Xian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, read-poc-2015-2016, african-diaspora

1. A collection of essays and speeches by Audre Lorde. A lot of people have read this since she is definitely one of the most important and influential women in history. Which is why my words on it aren't really that important because it's no different than anyone else's.

2. I don't read a lot of non-fiction but this was written in a way where I could easily digest it without clawing my eyes out. It is written in her lovely voice by her lovely fingers.

3. She is delicate and strong, knowing that s ...more

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Feb 23, 2018 Never Without a Book rated it really liked it

I was introduce to Audre years ago, but I never read any of her work. I'm not sure why I waited so long, but Sister Outsider was absolutely fantastic. What blows my mind about this book is that it was written in the 80's and sad to say not much has change when it comes to sexism, racism, ageism and homophobia today. Not only was Lorde a poet she was an activist of
hate crimes. One of the essay Lorde wrote that I found very interesting was the story of 20 year old Patricia Cowan. Patricia was an a ...more

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Nov 15, 2015 Jacob Wren rated it it was amazing

“The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot.”

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About Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde

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Audre Lorde is a revolutionary Black feminist. Lorde's poetry was published very regularly during the 1960s — in Langston Hughes' 1962 New Negro Poets, USA; in several foreign anthologies; and in black literary magazines. During this time, she was politically active in civil rights, anti-war, and feminist movements. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet's P ...more

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“Your silence will not protect you.” — 2690 likes

“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.” — 444 likes

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