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onetrooluff's review against another edition
3.0
There are important ideas here about the ways that racism and sexism and classism and homophobia intersect, but overall it just didn't blow me away like it has many others. Maybe it's because I was too busy being mad that I'm reading this fortyish years after it was written and it doesn't feel like we've made a whole lot of progress.
bri_steers's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
heathercottledillon's review against another edition
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
eralbesu's review against another edition
informative
5.0
Wow. So thought-provoking and affirming. I think everyone should read this book. And this having been my first time reading it made it very clear how far this thought has traveled to work it’s way into many spaces in the mainstream, and how far it still has to go (especially with the bastardization of this latest wave of feminism we mainly see online).
I’m going to be thinking about this book for a while and want to return to it and take my time and take notes.
I’m going to be thinking about this book for a while and want to return to it and take my time and take notes.
keegan_rellim_taylor's review against another edition
5.0
I'm often angry that I didn't discover feminist history until my thirties. This book reemphasized that. Lorde is brilliant and thought-provoking, and I wish everyone would read her. I only read things bordering on feminism like A Doll's House or The Scarlet Letter... written by men. So maddening!
Memorable quotes:
But I feel very much now still that we, Black Americans, exist alone in the mouth of the dragon. As I've always suspected, outside of rhetoric and proclamations of solidarity, there is no help, except ourselves. (Notes From a Trip to Russia, p. 30)
**
I have no reason to believe Russia is a free society. I have no reason to believe Russia is a classless society. Russia does not even appear to be a strictly egalitarian society. But bread does cost a few kopecs a loaf and everybody I saw seemed to have enough of it. Of course, I did not see Siberia, nor a prison camp, nor a mental hospital. But that fact, in a world where most people -- certainly most Black people -- are on a breadconcern level, seems to be to be quite a lot. If you conquer the bread problem, that gives you at least a chance to look around at the others. (Notes From a Trip to Russia, p. 34)
**
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for 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. (Poetry is Not a Luxury, p. 36)
**
I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word *poetry* to mean -- in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight. (p. 37)
**
Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of "it feels right to me." We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. (Poetry is Not a Luxury, p. 37)
**
The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us -- the poet -- whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom. (Poetry is Not a Luxury, p. 38)
**
And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, "Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside." (Transformation of Silence, p. 42)
**
The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 54)
**
The very word *erotic* comes from the Greek word *eros,* the personification of love in all its aspects -- born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 55)
**
Once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 57)
**
When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual's. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 58, feels related to the experience of religious deconstruction for me)
**
Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface. (Sexism, p. 60)
**
. . . the assumption that the herstory and myth of white women is the legitimate and sole herstory and myth of all women to call upon for power and background, and that nonwhite women and our herstories are noteworthy only as decorations, or examples of female victimization. I ask that you be aware of the effect that this dismissal has upon the community f Black women and other women of Color, and how it devalues your own words. (Letter to Mary Daly, p. 69)
**
The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries. To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well as our difference. (Letter to Mary Daly, p. 70)
**
I had decided never again to speak to white women about racism. I felt it was wasted energy because of destructive guilt and defensiveness, and because whatever I had to say might better be said by white women to one another at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and probably with a better hearing. (Letter to Mary Daly, p. 70-71)
**
I wish to raise a Black man who will not be destroyed by, nor settle for, those corruptions called *power* by the white fathers who mean his destruction as surely as they mean mine. I wish to raise a Black man who will recognize that the legitimate objects of his hostility are not women, but the particulars of a structure that programs him to fear and despise women as well as his own Black self.
For me, this task begins with teaching my son that I do not exist to do his feeling for him.
Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly "inferior" capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny themselves their own essential humanity, becoming trapped in dependency and fear. (Man Child, p. 74)
**
I am thankful that one of my children is male, since that helps to keep me honest. Every line I write shrieks there are no easy solutions. (Man Child, p. 78)
**
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot. And then, just possibly, hopefully, it goes home, or on. (Audre Lorde/Adrienne Rich, p. 98)
**
If you're traveling a road that begins nowhere and ends nowhere, the ownership of that road is meaningless. If you have no land out of which the road comes, no place that road goes to, geographically, no goal, then the existence of that road is totally meaningless. Leaving rationality to the white man is like leaving him a piece of that road that begins nowhere and ends nowhere
. . . Rationality is not unnecessary. It serves the chaos of knowledge. It serves feeling. It serves to get from this place to that place. But if you don't honor those places, then the road is meaningless. Too often, that's what happens with the worship of rationality and that circular, academic, analytic thinking. But ultimately, I don't feel/think as a dichotomy. I see them as a choice of ways and combinations.
. . . I personally believe that the Black mother exists more in women; yet she is the name for a humanity that men are not without. But they have taken a position against that piece of themselves, and it is a world position, a position throughout time. (Audre Lorde/Adrienne Riche, 100-101)
**
The way you get people to testify against themselves is not to have police tactics and oppressive techniques. What you do is to build it in so people learn to distrust everything in themselves that has not been sanctioned, to reject what is most creative in themselves to begin with, so you don't even need to stamp it out. (Audre Lorde/Adrienne Rich, p. 102, feels like Church programming)
**
Memorable quotes:
But I feel very much now still that we, Black Americans, exist alone in the mouth of the dragon. As I've always suspected, outside of rhetoric and proclamations of solidarity, there is no help, except ourselves. (Notes From a Trip to Russia, p. 30)
**
I have no reason to believe Russia is a free society. I have no reason to believe Russia is a classless society. Russia does not even appear to be a strictly egalitarian society. But bread does cost a few kopecs a loaf and everybody I saw seemed to have enough of it. Of course, I did not see Siberia, nor a prison camp, nor a mental hospital. But that fact, in a world where most people -- certainly most Black people -- are on a breadconcern level, seems to be to be quite a lot. If you conquer the bread problem, that gives you at least a chance to look around at the others. (Notes From a Trip to Russia, p. 34)
**
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for 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. (Poetry is Not a Luxury, p. 36)
**
I speak here of poetry as a revelatory distillation of experience, not the sterile word play that, too often, the white fathers distorted the word *poetry* to mean -- in order to cover a desperate wish for imagination without insight. (p. 37)
**
Right now, I could name at least ten ideas I would have found intolerable or incomprehensible and frightening, except as they came after dreams and poems. This is not idle fantasy, but a disciplined attention to the true meaning of "it feels right to me." We can train ourselves to respect our feelings and to transpose them into a language so they can be shared. (Poetry is Not a Luxury, p. 37)
**
The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us -- the poet -- whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom. (Poetry is Not a Luxury, p. 38)
**
And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, "Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside." (Transformation of Silence, p. 42)
**
The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.
The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 54)
**
The very word *erotic* comes from the Greek word *eros,* the personification of love in all its aspects -- born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 55)
**
Once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 57)
**
When we live outside ourselves, and by that I mean on external directives only rather than from our internal knowledge and needs, when we live away from those erotic guides from within ourselves, then our lives are limited by external and alien forms, and we conform to the needs of a structure that is not based on human need, let alone an individual's. But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible to ourselves in the deepest sense. (Uses of the Erotic, p. 58, feels related to the experience of religious deconstruction for me)
**
Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface. (Sexism, p. 60)
**
. . . the assumption that the herstory and myth of white women is the legitimate and sole herstory and myth of all women to call upon for power and background, and that nonwhite women and our herstories are noteworthy only as decorations, or examples of female victimization. I ask that you be aware of the effect that this dismissal has upon the community f Black women and other women of Color, and how it devalues your own words. (Letter to Mary Daly, p. 69)
**
The oppression of women knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries, true, but that does not mean it is identical within those differences. Nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries. To deal with one without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well as our difference. (Letter to Mary Daly, p. 70)
**
I had decided never again to speak to white women about racism. I felt it was wasted energy because of destructive guilt and defensiveness, and because whatever I had to say might better be said by white women to one another at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and probably with a better hearing. (Letter to Mary Daly, p. 70-71)
**
I wish to raise a Black man who will not be destroyed by, nor settle for, those corruptions called *power* by the white fathers who mean his destruction as surely as they mean mine. I wish to raise a Black man who will recognize that the legitimate objects of his hostility are not women, but the particulars of a structure that programs him to fear and despise women as well as his own Black self.
For me, this task begins with teaching my son that I do not exist to do his feeling for him.
Men who are afraid to feel must keep women around to do their feeling for them while dismissing us for the same supposedly "inferior" capacity to feel deeply. But in this way also, men deny themselves their own essential humanity, becoming trapped in dependency and fear. (Man Child, p. 74)
**
I am thankful that one of my children is male, since that helps to keep me honest. Every line I write shrieks there are no easy solutions. (Man Child, p. 78)
**
The learning process is something you can incite, literally incite, like a riot. And then, just possibly, hopefully, it goes home, or on. (Audre Lorde/Adrienne Rich, p. 98)
**
If you're traveling a road that begins nowhere and ends nowhere, the ownership of that road is meaningless. If you have no land out of which the road comes, no place that road goes to, geographically, no goal, then the existence of that road is totally meaningless. Leaving rationality to the white man is like leaving him a piece of that road that begins nowhere and ends nowhere
. . . Rationality is not unnecessary. It serves the chaos of knowledge. It serves feeling. It serves to get from this place to that place. But if you don't honor those places, then the road is meaningless. Too often, that's what happens with the worship of rationality and that circular, academic, analytic thinking. But ultimately, I don't feel/think as a dichotomy. I see them as a choice of ways and combinations.
. . . I personally believe that the Black mother exists more in women; yet she is the name for a humanity that men are not without. But they have taken a position against that piece of themselves, and it is a world position, a position throughout time. (Audre Lorde/Adrienne Riche, 100-101)
**
The way you get people to testify against themselves is not to have police tactics and oppressive techniques. What you do is to build it in so people learn to distrust everything in themselves that has not been sanctioned, to reject what is most creative in themselves to begin with, so you don't even need to stamp it out. (Audre Lorde/Adrienne Rich, p. 102, feels like Church programming)
**
melissa_muses's review against another edition
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Striking and breathtakingly sad how relevant so many of Lorde’s observations are today, so many decades on. Incredibly powerful.
whatulysses's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0