Quote

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.

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
Call
Raises
Voice
Whenever
Woman
Refuse
Black
Conscious
Trivialized
Even
Somebody
Strident
Going
Issues
Silenced
Hear
Central
Existence
Perfectly

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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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Without community, there is no liberation.
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Only by learning to live in harmony with your contradictions can you keep it all afloat.
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Raising Black children-female and male-in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive.
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... it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.
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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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Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometimes contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings... This is how new visions begin.
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For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it.
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I was going to die, if not sooner, then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.
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When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
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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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If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That's the beginning of social protest.
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We cannot settle for the pretenses of connection, or for the parodies of self-love.
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What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman's face?
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Poetry is not a luxury.
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. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.
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I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.
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I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
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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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If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
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