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Audre Lorde Taught Us to Honor Our Differences
In a new anthology, the iconic writer reminds us liberation requires valuing all Black lives, not just those who mirror our own experiences
My first encounters with Audre Lorde were superficial. I read and heard her quoted across the internet and during speeches at protests. I saw words on everything from T-shirts to memes and poster boards. Then I read her work. I went deeper into her life as a mother, lover of women, intellectual, and activist. I read Sister Outsider. I sat with each line of Litany for Survival. I read work with her DNA in it, including Janet Mock’s memoir, Surpassing Certainty. The book’s title and epigraph are Lorde’s words.
Lorde’s work challenges me to become more certain of my personal responsibility to a collective struggle for liberation. She beckons me to see myself as a complex person who deserves care as a revolutionary act. She tells me that as a woman, I am powerful and dangerous.
Her poetry, prose, memoir, oration, and activism organize my thinking and doing. With the release of a new anthology, The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, edited by Roxane Gay, Lorde continues to agitate, an art all good organizers perfect. Lorde, who died in 1992 at the age of 58, agitates me into making informed assessments while living in between the contradictions of the world as it is and the world as it should be. Through Lorde’s work, we are reminded that the fight for Black liberation must include recognition of our multitudes and an enduring defense of them. True liberation requires valuing all Black lives, not just those who mirror our own experiences.
In this moment, made possible by generations of freedom fighters, we have an unprecedented opportunity. People are organizing for a world where our social, political, and economic lives are based in dignity — not exploitation and violence. Everything is being questioned. Those who oppose these efforts should not expect us to let up anytime soon.
Students are demanding to learn in police-free schools where counselors, librarians, and restorative justice practitioners are prioritized over punishment. Water protectors and land stewards are calling for an end to extractive energy practices in…
