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When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.

Audre Lorde

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Audre Lorde
Age: 58 †
Born: 1934
Born: February 18
Died: 1992
Died: November 17
Essayist
Feminist
Librarian
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Audre Geraldine Lorde
Women
Develop
Experiences
Structure
Color
Present
Circulate
Create
Feminists
Literature
Structures
Culture
Feminist

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Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
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It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America's mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.
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So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
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To face the realities of our lives is not a reason for despair-despair is a tool of your enemies. Facing the realities of our lives gives us motivation for action. For you are not powerless... You know why the hard questions must be asked. It is not altruism, it is self-preservation-survival.
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Whenever a conscious Black woman raises her voice on issues central to her existence, somebody is going to call her strident, because they don't want to hear about it, nor us. I refuse to be silenced and I refuse to be trivialized, even if I do not say what I have to say perfectly.
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Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
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I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.
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I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side
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The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.
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You are the one that you are looking for.
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Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
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What I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?
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Pain is an event ... Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain.
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I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
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As we come to know, accept, and explore our feelings, they will become sanctuaries and fortresses and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas-the house of difference so necessary to change and the conceptualization of any meaningful action.
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... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
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When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.
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Black women are programmed to define ourselves within this male attention and to compete with each other for it rather than to recognize and move upon our common interests.
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Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
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We have too often been expected to speak all things to all people and speak everyone else's position but our own.
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