Audre Lorde (1934–1992)

In this "biomythography" Lorde explores the various women who impacted her life, starting with her mother in her childhood, her friend Gennie, and as she grows into young adulthood, the various lovers she had over the years.

This seems to be one of those books that straddle fiction and nonfiction, though it reads like a memoir and includes the emotional truths Lorde experiences as a Black lesbian woman, starting with growing up in Harlem and moving through her young adulthood. The first half show more of the book dealing with her childhood, her mother, and her school friends connected most with me. She kind of lost me when she started talking about her relationships, but I could appreciate the way they each helped her become more herself. It was sometimes harrowing to read - she has an unsafe abortion, and the FBI just casually show up at her door. Lorde explains how, despite being lesbian, she still experienced racism in the gay community and had to deal with not fitting into the molds that even the "gay girls" as she calls them had for relationship roles. Being a Black gay woman in the 1940s and 50s was no easy thing, yet Lorde also experiences joy and love. A powerful read that will stick with me for a long time. show less

The more poetry I read, the more I'm starting to understand what I love in a collection. I want a thread, a theme, a constant idea that connects. I want free verse and strict form, a mix of flow and form that ebbs and weaves a story of a time, a place, a person, a mythology. Playfulness mixed with seriousness—just like life: that constant swerving from joy to sadness to anger and back again. And more than anything, I want to know the trees, the birds, the insects, the flowers, all of the show more nature that surrounds that time, place, person. Ecopoetry seems to be my sweet spot. This collection does so much of what I love, with an added bonus at the end explaining some of the African mythological figures that I (shamefully) knew nothing about.

There are ideas from this collection that will live in my head like "psychic graffiti." "Compromise is a coffin nail" seems to be what Congress believes. "I have died too many deaths / that were not mine" says SO MUCH about the pain and suffering of a lifetime. I loved BUT WHAT CAN YOU TEACH MY DAUGHTER :

when she talks of liberation
she means freedom
from that pain
she knows
what you know
can hurt
but what you do
not know
can kill.

But there's also a lot that went right over my head, I tried to parse out the meaning and got stuck. I need a course on Audre Lorde. show less

It's at once amazing and depressing just how many of the pieces in this collection by Audre Lorde—some of them more than 40 years old—could believably be responses to the events of 2020 with only one or two minor edits. True, there are some dated elements—invocations of the Goddess spirit which inhabits all women, etc, are so 70s to me that you can just about smell the patchouli, and they don't resonate with my feminism at all. But wow, when Lorde was good she was good—able to craft show more a short sentence that seems simple at first glance but that knocks you flat on your metaphorical ass as soon as you start to think about it in a combination intellectual/moral/ethical challenge. show less

Audre Lorde, with the nearness of death palpable and tangible, has written a profoundly insightful anecdote/reflection on her experience with breast cancer as a black, lesbian feminist in The Cancer Journals. Through journal excerpts, seminal speeches, and self-examining essays, Lorde bridges the personal and the political. Having had a mastectomy and a cancer diagnosis, she begins with the dangers of silence; how the sight of death makes us fear not having done or said what we needed or show more wanted to; how a realisation of doing nothing or doing something doesn't change the fact of mortality. Within this silence, desire subduedly courses. This desire is not solely driven by the want for words to crawl out of mouths in their truth and will. It includes the love of women, the intense wish for the desired to desire back.

As society continuously constrict the definition of "woman" based on her femininity, Lorde speaks of the struggles in accepting the loss of one of her breasts. While people around her insist on the use of silicone prosthesis instead of reserving a space on her full recovery or time to grieve this loss, it reveals how we reduce women to their body parts. Horrifically, a nurse got mad at Lorde for not wearing her prosthesis, proceeding to mention how one-breasted women in public make people uncomfortable. Having one breast is not shameful or embarrassing; physical asymmetry is not ugly. This constant need for women to adhere to society's brutal norms, its encouragement to hide or remedy appearances post-surgery, notwithstanding the mental, physical, and emotional toll of illness are deeply harmful. Several ideas aim at the fashion industry's blatant disregard for different bodies as well; its standards of beauty contribute to this cyclic demand. In turn, women lose themselves, solely clings to their identity through others' perception. And so Lorde wrote, "Women have been programmed to view our bodies in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves, and how we wish to use them."

The Cancer Journals is an intimate, thought-provoking look at a subject that doesn't often find its place in the public forum. It is a compelling dismantling of notions and expectations on women we don't otherwise notice, most we have come to embrace as ordinary. Lorde's sincerity and distinct voice reverberate across its pages, rare tears even surface in my eyes once. This is a crucial feminist text, where a much-needed societal and medical criticism reside. show less