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Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

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
Absolute
Profit
Difference
Institutionalized
Differences
Surplus
Economy
Outsiders
Needs
Rejection
People
Necessity
Absolutes

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We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.
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I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within/into me - to share valleys and mountains upon my body the way the earth does in hills and peaks.
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I train myself for triumph by knowing it is mine no matter what.
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Your silence will not protect you.
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There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
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The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.
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Those of us forged in the crucibles of difference know that survival is not an academic skill.
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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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Somedays, if bitterness were a whetstone, I could be sharp as grief.
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I am a Black Feminist. I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.
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Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.
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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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How a diamond comes into a knot of flame How a sound comes into a word, coloured By who pays what for speaking. Some words are open. Love is a word another kind of open — As a diamond comes into a knot of flame I am black because I come from the earth's inside. Take my word for jewel in your open light.
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But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
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Some words live in my throat breeding like adders. Others know sun seeking like gypsies over my tongue to explode through my lips
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Well, I do not want to be tolerated, nor misnamed. I want to be recognized.
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Hatred is a death wish for the hated, not a life wish for anything else.
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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.
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Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
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Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.
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