A Burst of Light

by Audre Lorde

Where are we on this food chain of life to be eaten so easily century after century, decade after decade?

In Japan it’s said that the words of the soul reside in a spirit called kotodama, or the spirit of words, and that the act of speaking words has the power to change the world.

If what we are talking about is feminism, then the personal is political and we can subject everything in our lives to scrutiny.

It is in the interest of a capitalist profit system for us to privatize much of our experience.

there is an underlying integrity that asserts itself in all of our actions.

Feelings are not wrong, but you are accountable for the behavior you use to satisfy those feelings.

how does our sexuality enrich us and empower our actions?

unity does not require that we be identical to each other.

But what is normal in this deranged society by which we are all

trapped?

no matter how difficult it may be to look at the realities of our lives, it is there that we will find the strength to change them.

We are also citizens of the most powerful country in the world, a country which stands upon the wrong side of every liberation struggle on earth.

How are we persuaded to participate in our own destruction by maintaining our silences?

No one will free us but ourselves, here nor there. So our survivals are not separate, even though the terms under which we struggle differ.

How do we raise children to deal with these realities? For if we do not, we only disarm them, send them out into the jaws of the dragon unprepared. If we raise our children in the absence of an accurate picture of the world as we know it, then we blunt their most effective weapons for survival and growth, as well as their motivation for social change.

And if we can keep this earth spinning and remain upon it long enough, the future belongs to us and our children because we are fashioning it with a vision rooted in human possibility and growth, a vision that does not shrivel before adversity.

But as children of Color, Lesbian parents or no, our children are programmed to be sacrifices to the vision of white racist profit- oriented sexist homophobic America, and that we cannot allow. So if we must raise our children to be warriors rather than cannon fodder, at least let us be very clear in what war we are fighting and what inevitable shape victory will wear. Then our children will choose their own battles.

My poems are filled with blood these days because the future is so bloody.

And I am determined to fight it even when I am not sure of the terms of the battle nor the face of victory.

All of our children are prey. How do we raise them not to prey upon themselves and each other? And this is why we cannot be silent, because our silences will come to testify against us out of the mouths of our children.

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!

As a living creature I am part of two kinds of forces—growth and decay, sprouting and withering, living and dying, and at any given moment of our lives, each one of us is actively located somewhere along a continuum between these two forces.

Don’t they know good things get better by opening them up to others, giving and taking and changing?

I hold now to what I know and have always known in my heart ever since I first knew what loving was—that when it truly exists it is the most potent and lasting force in life, even if certainly not the fastest. But without it nothing else is worth a damn.

their joy in living which is one of their most potent weapons,

despite the fear, despite the uncertainty, despite the dangers. There is work to be done.

None of these struggles are ever easy, and even the smallest victory is never to be taken for granted. Each victory must be applauded, because it is so easy not to battle at all, to just accept and call that acceptance inevitable.

Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time and the arena and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle wherever we are standing.

and once we doubt our power, we stop using it. We rob our comrades, our lovers, our friends, and our selves of ourselves.

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.