Audre Lorde Research Papers

“I am a black feminist… I recognize that my power as well as my primary obsessions come as a result of my blackness as well as my womaness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable” … As a woman of color, I find that some feminists don’t seem terribly concerned with the issues unique to women of color—the ongoing effects of racism and post-colonialism, the status of women in the Third World, working against the trenchant archetypes black women are forced into (angry black woman, mammy, hottentot, and the like). (Gay 173).

Known as The Golden Age in English history, the 45 year rule of Queen Elizabeth I turned the declining country of England, into one of the most powerful and prosperous countries in the world.

For this journal entry, I chose to compare Audre Lorde's Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference to the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards. In Lorde's piece, she talks about how oppressed people are often taught to ignore the fact that they are oppressed. We are taught to handle the difference we face by either ignoring them, copying them or destroying them. Lorde says that society as a whole has failed to see differences as a "springboard for creative change." Her article focuses on the fact that refusing to see creative differences makes it impossible to see the different problems and pitfalls women face. Some problems all women share and other problems all women do not share. For example, the experience of a white woman is different

By expressing this with the African American society of women who are continuously torched by the demanding words of men, McLune appeals strongly to all American women’s intellect of equality and respect. Women should not have to be judged by men and expect to be treated as if they owe anyone something, let alone have to be mistreated and belittled, if that were to be the case then men should be treated the same, therefore McLune’s audience, should understand that that is not how you define a black woman in any terms.

Lorde was a minority in every group that she belonged to, and although she gained support and began to have the ability to self-integrate, she still faced hardships through discrimination. Lorde's feeling that she did not belong completely runs throughout the book: "The ‘time' when I would have to protect myself alone, although I did not know how or when. For Flee and me, the forces of social evil were not theoretical, not long distance nor solely bureaucratic" (205). Here Lorde is pointing out that her struggle is not solely one of a lesbian. Lorde is a double minority in this case because she is a black and a lesbian. This point to the argument in the text as a whole, that Lorde is still a minority even in her own groups, for example, she is even a minority in her own family (the only lesbian) and therefore Lorde's battle of integration did not end at her finding a group of friends.. This emphasizes Lorde's argument that throughout the book, she lives in houses, but never has a home. Lorde, being a double and sometimes even triple minority continues to experience hardship throughout the book. On page 255, Lorde again looks to her friends and lovers as a

She describes how white women “ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness” when they ignore the black female’s point of view and focus solely on the white female’s view (117). She points out the hypocrisy of white feminists, in that they will refuse to read black females’ works because they are “too difficult to understand,” but will read the works of Shakespeare, Molière, Dostoyefsky, and Aristophanes (117) There’s an obvious contradiction between white feminists’ “incorporation” of black females into their movement and the exclusion of their literature, which Lorde later analyzes and determines is because white women would feel guilt upon recognizing and validating their experiences. Furthermore, the exclusion of black writings from the feminist movement weakens the strength of the movement, offering the opposite effect as desired. Lorde writes how “ignoring the differences of race between women and the implications of those differences presents the most serious threat to the mobilization of women’s joint power.” (117) Since the feminist movement seeks to apply social pressure to achieve social change, it would make sense to try to gain strength in numbers by including the most people possible; Lorde sees this strength in numbers and calls into question the consistency of the white side of the feminist movement with its

In our class discussions and reading, I learned that women were once in charge of the human race, women were a part of a community, no race was inferior or superior, there was peace and harmony in the world until the patriarchal era came, planning to embed itself in the ground for a long time. Women were raped of their identity, their race and their status in society. Men ruled the biblical stories, leaving Mary out. Hence, the war started between the races, women fought to gain their identity back and to do so, they started with writing. One of those women was Audre Lorde. Audre Lorde was raised in a very sheltered family. She was protected by her mother who believed that white people should not be trusted. Seeing her mother

The poem, “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde is a both a confessional and identity poem. She is not only addressing her internal battle and self-suffering, but also discussing the societal inequities African American women were suffering in the United States. The poem’s diction, on the surface, produces a tranquil tone to the poem. This facet of tranquility in the poem is used to express how her battle against inequity will not be fought with violence or hatred, and how she is not blaming any specific party or institution for her personal suffering. She instead plans to use the power and beauty of words to communicate the flaws of the image of women, fight against injustice and racism, and alleviate her internal despair. “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde is an anthem for African American women and uses vivid imagery, ancestral references, and a call to action to connect to the reader and enact a fight against the underrepresentation of African American women.

Akin to intersectional romance fiction, poetry is equivalently as radical. Poetry magnifies the significance of language as a revolutionary tool, one that liberates women and cultivates an environment in which women are free to address their aspirations and anxieties while condemning the ideals of a society that operates under the canons of male chauvinism. In a collection of letters published as a tribute to the late Audre Lorde in Off Our Backs, a feminist newspaper journal written for women by women, one anonymous contributor discusses how Lorde “encourages all women to find their own means of expression, their own poetry to value and to use” (Tyler 32) in her piece “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. In the piece, Lorde discusses how for women, poetry is not a nonessential indulgence, as Caucasian men throughout history have suggested through how they render poetry as an opportunity to “cover [a] desperate wish for imagination without insight” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde contends that poetry is a “vital necessity of [the] existence” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36) of women because it establishes the infrastructure on which women “predicate [their] hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action” (Lorde, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” 36). Lorde’s text motivates women to exercise “the power of the word, a freedom for women greatly feared by…patriarchal society” (Tyler 32). Lorde states the poetry

Audre Lorde was born in New York City the 18th of February 1934 of Caribbean immigrants. As a child, the author had difficulties in communication that made her acknowledge poetry and its power as a form of expression, allowing her to become a writer, a feminist, and a civil rights activist. Which is very strong in “Age, Race, Class, and Sex” in which the author describes her feelings using a style of superior journalism with elements of popular culture that leads to racial issues. In order to emphasize more her sociological argument, Lorde uses personal experience as ethos. “As a forty-nine- year- old Black lesbian feminist socialist, mother of two including one boy, and member an inter- racial couple, I usually find myself a part of some group defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong”(Lorde, 114). Audre Lorde strength is in her inferiority and points out very actual issues such as: distortion of relationship between oppressor and oppressed and the misnamed differences that still leads to racism.

Lorde's focal subject in this section is "contrast" - contrasts of sex, class, race, sexuality, encounter, and so forth. She examines the contrasts amongst ladies and approaches women's activists to perceive these distinctions, even to commend them, as opposed to endeavor to defeat them by disregarding their reality. She contends that we should "take our disparities and make them qualities" (99). The (white) women's activist development fears tending to contrast, however just by tending to distinction would it be able to make group. Lorde utilizes the expression "interdependence" to allude to the genuine association amongst ladies and ladies' want to sustain each other. She approaches ladies to hold onto these as the way to the opportunity

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” This clarification forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism; a notable example occurs within the Suffrage movement, where votes for white women were prioritized over women of color in order to push such legislation through. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, often only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions:

In an attempt to define Black Feminism, Collins clarifies that it must “avoid the idealist position that ideas can be evaluated in isolation from the groups that create them (Collins 385).” In reality, this forms her basis for why Black Feminism is necessary, and who it serves. Thinking about feminism historically, the concerns of black women were pushed aside in favor of fighting sexism, most notably during the Suffrage movement. And even when feminism began looking at other social injustices, such as racism and class issues, only prominent feminists were invited to the discussion. What resulted was, and often continues to be, a problem of white women speaking for oppressed people. It’s impossible, Collins argues, to have Black Feminist thought without examining the experiences and positions of African American women. Therefore, Black Feminism must be a movement that “encompasses theoretical interpretations of Black women’s reality by those who live in it (Collins 386).” However, such a definition brings about many questions: who’s experiences are valued, how do black women take their voice back, and how can they center feminist thinking on their own unique standpoint?

“They killed my son in cold blood,” lamented Eloise Armstead. Her husband, Add Armstead, was traveling to work with a companion on Saturday evening in the early 1970s. Thomas Shea and Walter Scott, responding to a call about a cabby that was robbed earlier that day, used this opportunity to rid the world of the wicked and gain a victory for the righteous. Walking along New York Blvd. in South Jamaica, Queens, Shea and his partner pulled alongside the two. Armstead says, as he recalls the incident, “We were walking, not saying anything to each other, and this car pulls up, and this white fella opens the door with a gun.” To him and his companion it looked like they were going to be robbed, so they ran. As the gunshots

It was during the Elizabethan age that England felt the complete effect of the Renaissance. There occurred a revival of the old and classical literature of Greece and Rome and this was manifested in the poetry of the age. The Elizabethan age was characterized by an extreme spirit of adventure, aestheticism and materialism which became the characteristic features of Elizabethan poetry. Many poets displayed their skill in versification during this time and England came to be called The Nest Of Singing Birds.