Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Audre Lorde

4.51 · Rating details · 29,281 ratings · 2,221 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

Get A Copy

Paperback, 190 pages

Published June 1st 1984 by Crossing Press

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about Sister Outsider, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Best Feminist Books

2,412 books — 3,323 voters

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Books White People Need to Read

1,193 books — 1,653 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.51 ·

Rating details

· 29,281 ratings · 2,221 reviews

Sort order

Start your review of Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Mar 13, 2018 Thomas rated it it was amazing

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

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

flag 259 likes · Like · see review

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

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

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

flag 110 likes · Like · see review

Feb 16, 2022 emma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: recommend, project-black-history-month, nonfiction, owned, couldn-t-wait-to-read, classics, reviewed, non-ya, authors-of-color, 4-stars

Best feeling is when you finish a book and you're like...why did I wait so long?

I don't like reviewing nonfiction, because then it's just my thoughts vs facts, and usually the facts are presented by someone far smarter, more knowledgeable, and cooler than me.

And in this case...Audre Lorde beats me out on all three categories.

So - this is excellent and you should read it and that's the whole review.

Bottom line: Just read it!!

-----------------

reading books by Black authors for Black History Month! ...more

flag 82 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 80 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 64 likes · Like · see review

Apr 17, 2021 Meike rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-read, usa

This book is of course a milestone of intersectional feminism, long before intersectional feminism was a thing - and considering the fact that Lorde spent a lot of time in Germany, it's pretty astounding that this is the first translation of her iconic collection of essays, speeches, and interviews that is published by a big publishing house here in Germany. Born in New York to immigrant parents from Barbados and Grenada, Lorde was a Black lesbian socialist feminist, and her main goal was to hei This book is of course a milestone of intersectional feminism, long before intersectional feminism was a thing - and considering the fact that Lorde spent a lot of time in Germany, it's pretty astounding that this is the first translation of her iconic collection of essays, speeches, and interviews that is published by a big publishing house here in Germany. Born in New York to immigrant parents from Barbados and Grenada, Lorde was a Black lesbian socialist feminist, and her main goal was to heighten the visibility of marginalized groups, secure their place in society and strengthen solidarity between members of the groups (e.g. Black women and men or Black and white feminists). To realize that ambition, she refrained from crafting complicated, highly theoretical texts, and rather wrote pieces that married the socially sound, the moral and the emotional, thus directly appealing to the social consciousness and the moral heart of her readers.

What I particularly love about Lorde is that she celebrates differences: She acknowledges that a lot of discrimination and lack of solidarity results from people being scared of or generally resenting what they are not or what they don't know, which of course means that they overlook or even repress the beauty of diversity and the power they could generate from the varied knowledge. And we still struggle with that. Case in point: As long as women are busy telling each other how to fill out female roles, the patriarchy will prevail. If oppressed groups would show more solidarity, they would be able not only to participate in the game, but to change the rules. Lorde tells her readers not to be afraid of the anger they experience, as creative disruption is just what we need.

Another captivating thought: Lorde states that it's a mistake to frame eroticism as a power opposed to rational thought. For her, eroticism/sensuality is the bridge between the spiritual and the politcal, it means the physical and emotional expression of passionate love. Lorde also offers a very strong essay about her role as a mother and how she wants to empower her son. What irritated me though was a text about her travel to Russia, which reads like a very naive piece that fails to capture what it means to live in a dictatorship.

In the book, the US is spelt as "america" (for obvious reasons) and in the German version, "race" remains untranslated (to a German for obvious reasons, but here's an explanation for international readers: The Nazis claimed the superiority of a (non-existent) "Aryan race", and in Germany today, only Neo-Nazis will use the term "Rasse" to describe people instead of animals). As texts by the German translators explain, Lorde helped to found the ISD (Initiative Schwarze Deutsche; Intiative Black Germans) and the ADEFRA (Afrodeutsche Frauen; Afro-German Women), she also held lectures and readings and initiated writing by Black German poets and activists, thus becoming an important figure for the strengthening of Black German feminism.

So you don't need me to point it out, but here I go: This is a classic text, go read it. But here's one last thought: While immersed in the book, I frequently thought: Well, we already know that, this is only of historical value - and then I realized: Yes, it's now common knowledge, but the situation hasn't changed, or not enough. We need to make old feminist writing feel historic, we need to make progress.

You can learn more about the book in our latest podcast episode (in German). ...more

flag 52 likes · Like · see review

Jul 02, 2021 julieta rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: young-americans, lgbtqi

Inspiring and beautiful, a necessary read.
"We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding."

"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. ...more

flag 49 likes · Like · see review

Jul 01, 2020 Cheryl rated it it was amazing

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

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

flag 37 likes · Like · see review

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.

flag 36 likes · Like · see review

Jun 22, 2014 Aubrey rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Aubrey by: Zanna

Shelves: reality-check, queer-as-in, pure-power-of-gr, person-of-reality, 5-star, person-of-everything, 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

flag 32 likes · Like · see review

Jan 27, 2014 Steph rated it it was amazing

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

flag 32 likes · Like · see review

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

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

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

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Oct 30, 2021 BookOfCinz rated it really liked it

Shelves: real-life-sh-t, restore-your-faith-in-humanity, memoir, 2021-reads, believe-the-hype, books-to-read-before-30, essays, feminism

Frequently, when speaking with men and white women, I am reminded of how difficult and time-consuming it is to have to reinvent the pencil every time you want to send a message

This is my first time reading Audre Lorde and man..... I am kicking myself for not getting to her essays sooner. I learned so much, she speak of things that frustates me that I can't seem to put into word, and I'm shocked and not really surprised that the things she wrote about now are still plaguing us today.... *sigh* ...more

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

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

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

flag 26 likes · Like · see review

Mar 28, 2021 Hayley rated it it was amazing

I could read her writing all day

flag 25 likes · Like · see review

Jan 28, 2021 Bethany rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-favorites, black-authors, lgbtq

How I've gotten this far in my life without having read Audre Lorde I don't know but Sister Outsider should be required reading and it's something I anticipate returning to again in the future. It is a powerful, insightful, thought-provoking collection of essays from an eminent Black, lesbian, feminist poet and thinker. Her writing is by turns incisive, witty, raw, and vulnerable. She does not pull her punches, but is just as ruthless in critiquing her own biases and flaws as she is others.

Ther How I've gotten this far in my life without having read Audre Lorde I don't know but Sister Outsider should be required reading and it's something I anticipate returning to again in the future. It is a powerful, insightful, thought-provoking collection of essays from an eminent Black, lesbian, feminist poet and thinker. Her writing is by turns incisive, witty, raw, and vulnerable. She does not pull her punches, but is just as ruthless in critiquing her own biases and flaws as she is others.

There is a lot that could be said here, but I'm particularly struck by the way she talked about women's anger because they parallel conversations we continue to have today. About the power and potential of female rage when it is directed into change. Her thinking is deeply intersectional as well and she is careful to express the importance of inclusion and value to everyone and of true allyship across lines. This includes men, straight women, white women and more. Though she also recognizes the places this can be difficult due to racism or homophobia or sexism. She lays out the aggressions and micro-agressions faced by Black women throughout their lives, the specific fears of Black motherhood, the everyday racism thoughtlessly visited on her and others by white women who are hateful or merely oblivious.

Frequently while reading I could see threads of thought or arguments that I have seen carried into more recent works of antiracist or intersectionally feminist literature. It's fascinating to see the origins of such significant ideas. And while Lorde talks about her queerness specifically, it's also clear that this was intended to be a book with a wider audience than only queer women. She expresses deep care for the bonds of sisterhood and the power of people coming together, even if that care has sometimes led to deep pain. As a white woman, I was struck by her words about the importance of listening to the CONTENT of what someone is saying, rather than the tone or attitude it is delivered with. It is valid for women of color to feel and express anger and it is only through listening to understand without being offended by the tone of what is being said that we can reach understanding and healing. This is true across racial lines, and within them.

There's a lot more that I took from this, but I will just say go read it! And take your time. I spent nearly an entire month reading this in short bits, digesting what she had to say. I think that is the way to go. Absolutely a new nonfiction favorite for me. ...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

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

Shelves: nonfiction, classic, essays, feminism, 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

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Oct 10, 2021 Ipsa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I'm lost. She's lost. We don't see each other clearly. She is my mirror. Her existence is etched with my fury. So it gives me vision -- an anger that hides a yearning for connection. An anger that hides my need to be touched by her; to be held by her; to be oiled by her. But I fear she will see in my face the distorted image of her self-hatred: so I have no desire to get over the anger fomented by her appearance, by the vision of her existence. It's easier to erect the myth of my superiority and I'm lost. She's lost. We don't see each other clearly. She is my mirror. Her existence is etched with my fury. So it gives me vision -- an anger that hides a yearning for connection. An anger that hides my need to be touched by her; to be held by her; to be oiled by her. But I fear she will see in my face the distorted image of her self-hatred: so I have no desire to get over the anger fomented by her appearance, by the vision of her existence. It's easier to erect the myth of my superiority and restlessness, than take on the threatning universe of her obliterative mirror-image. It's easier to look down on her from my internalised standards of the master's model of humanity. It's easier to kill her. I'm not worthy of being human. She is my mirror. She's not worthy of being human. So I hate her. We're animals. I hate her. She's me. It breaks my heart. I want to bury myself between her legs. I want to tear her apart. I want to cradle her at night. I want to slit her neck at night. I want to be gentle with her. I want to tear her to shreds every time her voice doesn't melt with mine; every time she isn't better than me. After all, what will hold my self-hating spine erect? What will contain the shame of slithering around in the seminal pool of my own vomit, and blood?

There is a pretense to a homogeneity of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist.

Sister Outsider is charged with the erotic: the erotism of anger; the erotism of why women are more competitive towards other women than men; the erotism of hatred; the erotism of politics. Make no mistake, this isn't pornography, a jaded excuse of the Erotic. It is life itself. It is the deep dark energy that flows in the body. Yours and mine. An energy that spurs us to understand, to action, to destroy, to create. We are afraid of our differences. Women are afraid of their differences. Marginalised people are afraid of their differences. So we tip-toe forever in the realms of superficial political correctness, and an exhausting politeness. Meanwhile, we shut ourselves in a dark dingy corner of our minds: forever distrustful, isolated, and only half-made. But we owe it to ourselves to reach down into that deep dark place, see and define the face that our terror of difference wears.

Audre Lorde unearths the collection of these essays from the subterranean depths of her mind, her body, her experiences. I've never seen or read a more visceral exploration of the hackneyed adage: Personal is Political. Her poetry is theory. Her life is theory. Yours and mine too. Theory has to be visceral, because pain is visceral; because life is visceral. Revolution doesn't happen through cold hard facts only; it happens every time we hurl ourselves head first into each other; every time we dare to look each other in the eyes, in a reckless abandon, and explore our differences. Liberation is painful. It's not polite.

Everybody should read this book. Trust me, it will know parts of you that you don't have words for. Let it touch you. Let it turn you on. Let it bring you back to your body.

4.5 ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Jul 30, 2019 Noria rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-in-2019, memoirs, enjoyed, feminism, 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

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

Nov 03, 2020 Lisa rated it really liked it

Shelves: essays, classics-20th-century

A strong, powerful collection from a writer/activist/poet that I'm embarrassed to admit, I had not even heard of before I read a few reviews on GR. Lorde is honest, clear-eyed, caring and accessible. ...more

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 22 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 19 likes · Like · see review

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

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

“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

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

Jul 01, 2021 may ➹ added it

Shelves: read-2021, rep-lgbtqiap-author, non-fiction, audiobook, rep-bipoc-author

“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.”

Audre Lorde’s works in this collection are a must-read, its topics ranging from the intersecting difficulties of being a Black lesbian woman in a racist, homophobic, misogynistic ...more

flag 17 likes · Like · see review

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

flag 16 likes · Like · see review

Mar 25, 2021 Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support."

I read Audre Lorde for the first time through a tiny turquoise Penguin Modern edition in 2018 in December sitting outside the New Delhi Railway Station on the footpath in the winter cold while I wa

"For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support."

I read Audre Lorde for the first time through a tiny turquoise Penguin Modern edition in 2018 in December sitting outside the New Delhi Railway Station on the footpath in the winter cold while I waited for one of my best friends to arrive for a much-anticipated visit. It was a selection of five essays, picked from Sister Outsider. I had begun it immediately after finishing the Baldwin book in the same series, my first time reading him as well.

Underdressed, shivering a bit, bright street lamp above me, I was charged and changed. I knew words had power and, in that moment, I felt it anew, coursing through me. A little over two years later, as I read Sister Outsider at last in the comfort of my bed, those same feelings slowly resurfaced.

This absolutely brilliant collection is bookended by two reports which show US imperialism and how it shapes global perception in its favour. The one at the start is about a trip to Russia in 1976 for some conference. Built from her edited journal entries, Lorde is very effusive about the living conditions & general atmosphere under socialism, though she is skeptical about achievement of a perfect society.

In the one at the end, she talks about two visits to Grenada, her mother's birthplace, five years apart before the revolution and after the US invasion. She tracks all the changes in a scathing critique of neocolonialism. Talking generally, while the pieces are set apart from each other in different formats, they touch upon similar set of themes and ideas.

As this space isn't enough to discuss each piece in detail—and I would have loved to do that—I will attempt to uncover the many central concerns that undergird Lorde's nonfiction writing. Maybe some day I will write a long and exhaustive piece on her works, poetry included, once I have read all of it.

Striking feature of her essays is how she taps into a Black female legacy, the antecedents of pride and power stretching from the Amazons of Dahomey to the Ashanti warrior queen Yaa Asantewaa to the abolitionist and social activist Harriet Tubman.

Capitalist forces, white america, the status-quo thrive on a policy of divide and conquer. Black people, and especially Black women, always exist in a heightened sense of anxiety and tension, never able to relax and rest. So Unsure of themselves and suspicious of others, they are hence prevented from forming sustainable, enriching bonds.

So Lorde sees differences that divide as a creative and necessary force for the exchange of ideas, for transformation. It is the first step in the process of coming together as a community. Dispelling the distortions constructed by the people in power is the only way towards solidarity, unity, and action.

Contrary to what the enemies propagate, it doesn't mean sameness or homogeneity, instead a shared purpose. She strongly advocates for self-definition for Black women. Only they get to decide who they are as individuals, what they want for themselves.

In her view, anger must be unleashed, not bottled up. Rage must be released, not restrained. If pain, both collective as well as individual, is not properly addressed, it metastasizes into suffering. The only solution is to channel it to speak truth to power, to demand change, birthing one shining sisterhood.
...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

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

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

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

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. ...more

flag 15 likes · Like · see review

Jun 10, 2020 Sunny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: excellent-theory-nonfiction-sociali

Phenomenal! Required reading!

flag 14 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Little Women Read...: SISTER OUTSIDER: ESSAYS AND SPEECHES	1	6	Feb 01, 2022 03:22PM
Goodreads Librari...: Please add page count to this Dutch edition of "Sister Outsider"	3	10	Nov 24, 2020 11:40PM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Feminism

1,836 users

Nonfiction

1,750 users

Writing > Essays

925 users

Race

531 users

LGBT

374 users

LGBT > Queer

289 users

Social Movements > Social Justice

253 users

Politics

223 users

Race > Anti Racist

212 users

Gender

140 users

See top shelves…

About Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde

3,476 followers

Audre Lorde was 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 ...more

Books by Audre Lorde

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House

More…

Articles featuring this book

Which Celebrity Book Club is Right For You?

There is no shortage of high-profile book clubs to join these days. But which ones match your reading tastes? Would you adore a Reese...

Trivia About Sister Outsider: ...

2 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Sister Outsider: ...

“Your silence will not protect you.” — 2800 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.” — 489 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Audre Lorde

Books by Audre Lorde

Articles featuring this book

Trivia About Sister Outsider: ...

Quotes from Sister Outsider: ...

See a Problem?

Preview — Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Audre Lorde

Books by Audre Lorde

Articles featuring this book

Trivia About Sister Outsider: ...

Quotes from Sister Outsider: ...

new topic
Discuss This Book