Sister Outsider Read online

Pin ‘Penguin Books’ to your pinterest.com/penguinukbooks

  Like ‘Penguin Books’ on facebook.com/penguinbooks

  Listen to Penguin at soundcloud.com/penguin-books

  Find out more about the author and

  discover more stories like this at penguin.co.uk

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

  India | New Zealand | South Africa

  Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

  First published in the United States of America by Crossing Press 1984

  This edition published in Penguin Classics 2019

  Copyright © Audre Lorde, 1984, 2007

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Cover: Detail from Threads of the Past, Inspirations for the Future by Dindga McCannon

  ISBN: 978-0-241-41049-3

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Footnotes

  Notes from a Trip to Russia

  1 These are edited journal entries from a two-week trip to Russia that I made in 1976 as the invited American observer to the African–Asian Writers Conference sponsored by the Union of Soviet Writers.

  Poetry Is Not a Luxury

  1 First published in Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture, no. 3 (1977).

  2 From ‘Black Mother Woman,’ first published in From A Land Where Other People Live (Broadside Press, Detroit, 1973), and collected in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1982) p. 53.

  The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action

  1 Paper delivered at the Modern Language Association’s ‘Lesbian and Literature Panel,’ Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977. First published in Sinister Wisdom 6 (1978) and The Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco, 1980).

  Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving

  1 First published in The Black Scholar, vol. 9, no. 7 (1978).

  2 Iris Andreski, Old Wives Tales: Life-Stories of African Women (Schocken Books, New York, 1970), p. 131.

  3 Melville Herskovits, Dahomey, 2 vols. (Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois, 1967), 1:320–322.

  Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

  1 Paper delivered at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mount Holyoke College, August 25, 1978. First published as a pamphlet by Out & Out Books. Now published as a pamphlet by Kore Press.

  Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface

  1 First published as ‘The Great American Disease’ in The Black Scholar, vol. 10, no. 9 (May–June 1979) in response to ‘The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists’ by Robert Staples in The Black Scholar, vol. 10, no. 8 (March–April 1979).

  2 ‘The Myth of the Black Matriarchy’ by Robert Staples in The Black Scholar, vol. 1, no. 3–4 (January–February 1970).

  3 From We Will Make A River, poems by Mary McAnnally (West End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979), p. 27.

  An Open Letter to Mary Daly

  1 Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon Press, Boston, 1978).

  2 In the spring of 1979, twelve Black women were murdered in the Boston area.

  Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response

  1 First published in Conditions: Four (1979).

  2 From ‘School Note’ in The Black Unicorn (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1978), p. 55.

  An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich

  1 This interview, held on August 30, 1979 in Montague, Massachusetts, was edited from three hours of tapes we made together. It was commissioned by Marilyn Hacker, the guest editor of Woman Poet The East (Women-In-Literature, Reno, Nevada, 1981), where a portion of it appears. The interview was first published in Signs, vol. 6, no. 4 (Summer 1981).

  2 The First Cities (Poets Press, New York, 1968).

  3 New York Head Shop and Museum (Broadside Press, Detroit, 1974), pp. 52–56.

  4 Cables to Rage (Paul Breman, Heritage Series, London, 1970).

  5 First published in From a Land Where Other People Live (Broadside Press, Detroit, 1973), and collected in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1982), pp. 39–40.

  6 Mina Shaughnessy (1924–78), then director of the SEEK Writing Program at the City College, City University of New York.

  7 ‘Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge’: A pre-baccalaureate program in compensatory education in the City University of New York in which a number of writer-teachers participated in the 1960s and early 1970s.

  8 Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, originally published by Persephone Press in 1982 and reissued by Crossing Press in 1983.

  9 The Black Unicorn (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1978).

  10 From ‘Need: A Choral of Black Women’s Voices’ in Chosen Poems, p. 115.

  11 ‘Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving,’ see p. 45.

  12 The Black Unicorn, pp. 108–110.

  13 See ‘The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,’ see p. 40.

  14 The Black Unicorn, p. 31.

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

  1 Comments at ‘The Personal and the Political Panel,’ Second Sex Conference, New York, September 29, 1979.

  Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference

  1 Paper delivered at the Copeland Colloquium, Amherst College, April 1980.

  2 From ‘Rape: A Radical Analysis, An African-American Perspective’ by Kalamu ya Salaam in Black Books Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 4 (1980).

  3 Seabury Press, New York, 1970.

  4 From ‘Outlines,’ unpublished poem.

  The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

  1 Keynote presentation at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, Storrs, Connecticut, June 1981.

  2 One poem from this series is included i n Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1978), pp. 105–108.

  3 This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, New York, 1984), first published in 1981.

  4 From ‘For Each of You,’ first published in From A Land Where Other People Live (Broadside Press, Detroit, 1973), and collected in Chosen Poems: Old and New (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1982), p. 42.

  Learning from the 60s

  1 Talk delivered at the Malcolm X Weekend, Harvard University, February 1982.

  Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger40

  1 An abbreviated version of this essay was published in Essence, vol. 14, no. 6 (October 1983). I wish to thank the following women without whose insights and support I could not have completed this paper: Andrea Canaan, Frances Clayton, Michelle Cliff, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Clare Coss, Yvonne Flowers, Gloria Joseph, Adrienne Rich, Charlotte Sheedy, Judy Simmons and Barbara Smith. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Sheila Blackwell Pinckney, 1953–1983.

  2 From a poem by Dr. Gloria Joseph.

  3 Unpublished paper by Samella Lewis.

  4 From ‘Letters from Black Feminists, 1972–1978’ by Barbara Smith and Beverly Smith in Conditions: Four (1979).

  5 From The I Ching.

  6 From ‘Nigger’ by Judy Dothard Simmons in Decent Intentions (Blind Beggar Press, New York, 1983).

  7 From The I Ching.

  8 This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Morag
a and Gloria Anzaldua (Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, New York, 1984).

  9 From The I Ching.

  10 From ‘Every Woman Ever Loved A Woman’ by Bernice Johnson Reagon, song performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock.

  11 From The I Ching.

  Grenada Revisited: An Interim Report

  1 I spent a week in Grenada in late December, 1983, barely two months after the U.S. invasion of the Black Caribbean island my parents left some sixty years earlier. It was my second visit in five years. This is an interim essay, a report written as the rest of Sister Outsider was already being typeset.

  2 P. Tyler, Washington Post, October 10, 1983, p. A14.

  3 A. Cockburn, Village Voice, November 8, 1983, p. 11.

  4 B.D. Ayers, New York Times, October 22, 1983, p. A5 and J. McQuiston, New York Times, October 26, 1983, p. A20.

  5 Text of Treaty, New York Times, October 26, 1983, p. A19.

  6 S. Taylor, New York Times, October 26, 1983, p. A19.

  7 A. Lewis, New York Times, November 3, 1983 and A. Cockburn, Village Voice, November 8, 1983, p. 10.

  8 S. Mydans, New York Times, January 15, 1984, p. 9.

  9 Christian Science Monitor, November 7, 1983.

  10 A. Schlesinger, Jr., Wall Street Journal, October 26, 1983.

  11 C. Sunshine, ed., Grenada – The Peaceful Revolution (E.P.I.C.A., Washington, D.C., 1982).

  12 C. Sunshine, The Guardian, December 28, 1983.

  13 E. Ray and B. Schaap, ‘U.S. Crushes Caribbean Jewel,’ Covert Action Bulletin # 20, Winter 1984, p. 11.

  14 Ibid., p. 13.

  15 Ibid., p. 5.

  16 S. Taylor, New York Times, November 6, 1983, p. 20.

  17 Ibid.

  18 Washington Post, November 21, 1983.

  19 CBS Evening News, December 18, 1983.

  20 The London Guardian, November 4, 1983.

  21 Grenada – The Peaceful Revolution, p. 87.

  22 Carriacou – In the Mainstream of the Revolution (Fedon Publishers, St. Georges, Grenada, 1982), pp. 54–57.

  23 Slogan of the Grenadian Revolution.