asmrbookishnesserin's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
slow-paced
5.0
shona22's review against another edition
5.0
This is a book to share with the women in your life. I've fallen in love with Audre and find myself mourning her all over again. She gave us so much
elyse27's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.75
sarahdkdc's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
"She offered me the hospitality of her house, and even though we did not speak the same language, I felt that she was a woman like myself, wishing that all of our children could live in peace upon their own earth, somehow make fruitful the power of their own hands" - "Trip to Russia"
Essential reading about womanhood, intersectionality, and anger.
Essential reading about womanhood, intersectionality, and anger.
scrow1022's review against another edition
5.0
Really powerful pieces on creating, fighting, relating to others; and how to be whole, how to survive in a world bent on breaking you. Though these were mostly written around 1980, they are still frightenly current.
colin_cox's review against another edition
5.0
Several of the essays and speeches in Sister Outsider are frequently anthologizes in college-level, American Literature textbooks. "Poetry is Not a Luxury" implies that poetry makes material what is functionally immaterial, or as Lorde suggests, "Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real" (39). "The Master's Tool Will Never Dismantle the Master's House" champions the importance of difference and interdependence as a means of thwarting the patriarchy's power and its "tools." Lorde says it much better than I when she argues that "[For] those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older...Survival is not an academic skill...It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths" (112). Here we see Lorde's words operating as an intellectual predecessor to many contemporary conversations regarding class, race, poverty, ageism, and disability. But this is not to suggest that Lorde is somehow ahistorical. More often than not, she echoes and recontextualizes the rich history of African American thought in intelligent ways. For example, how can one not think of W. E. B. Du Bois' notion of double-consciousness when Lorde writes, "My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition" (120-121). Lorde extends Du Bois' idea to include concrete definitional categories such as class, sexual orientation, and gender, and by doing so, she does what all great thinkers, in part, do; she recapitulates the past.
Furthermore, Sister Outsider displays Lorde's clarity and fearlessness. In "Uses of Anger," she establishes a rationale for the use of anger by women of color when advocating for anything, but particularly, equal rights and treatment. She argues, "Any discussion among women about racism must include the recognition and the use of anger...We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty" (128). I cannot overstate the importance of honesty as both a theoretical and practical concept in Sister Outsider. Sister Outsider brims with honesty for a distinct reason. Lorde wants to challenge her reader to consider a simple proposition: What poses a greater threat, women of color or the structural and societal mechanisms that oppress them?
In "Grenada Revisited," the final essay in the collection, Lorde meditates on the Regan administration's invasion of the Caribbean island nation in 1983. As I write this, the Trump administration continues to meddle in Venezuela and seems prepared to wage war in Iran. In response, no one seems to know the truth because the truth, more so now than ever, is fungible. Or so it seems. In response to the Regan administration's invasion of Grenada and the media coverage thereafter, Lorde writes, "Nineteen eighty-four is upon us, and doublethink has come home to scramble our brains and blanket our protest" (184). It's comforting that this scrambling isn't novel because it suggests that these "new" fights are, frankly, old ones. It's foolish to think there isn't an Audre Lorde writing about today as the Audre Lorde wrote about yesterday, but until we reckon with her, there's always Sister Outsider.
Furthermore, Sister Outsider displays Lorde's clarity and fearlessness. In "Uses of Anger," she establishes a rationale for the use of anger by women of color when advocating for anything, but particularly, equal rights and treatment. She argues, "Any discussion among women about racism must include the recognition and the use of anger...We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty" (128). I cannot overstate the importance of honesty as both a theoretical and practical concept in Sister Outsider. Sister Outsider brims with honesty for a distinct reason. Lorde wants to challenge her reader to consider a simple proposition: What poses a greater threat, women of color or the structural and societal mechanisms that oppress them?
In "Grenada Revisited," the final essay in the collection, Lorde meditates on the Regan administration's invasion of the Caribbean island nation in 1983. As I write this, the Trump administration continues to meddle in Venezuela and seems prepared to wage war in Iran. In response, no one seems to know the truth because the truth, more so now than ever, is fungible. Or so it seems. In response to the Regan administration's invasion of Grenada and the media coverage thereafter, Lorde writes, "Nineteen eighty-four is upon us, and doublethink has come home to scramble our brains and blanket our protest" (184). It's comforting that this scrambling isn't novel because it suggests that these "new" fights are, frankly, old ones. It's foolish to think there isn't an Audre Lorde writing about today as the Audre Lorde wrote about yesterday, but until we reckon with her, there's always Sister Outsider.