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Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider

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Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider served as a fundamental literary work for the Soviet Revolution. Unlike the other African American figures that were involved in the revolution, Lorde’s unique circumstances created an interesting perspective, which allowed her work to become a powerful contribution to the conception of the Soviet revolution. Hughes and Du Bois, two influential African American figures, were bonded by common threads and shared common experiences; this thread was being African American and males navigating through life in the United States. Many of the issues that the aforementioned figures focused on were reflective of things they had experienced/observed; as a result, they were easily placed in a mold. The mold created …show more content…

More specifically, Lorde was a woman. Being a woman, Lorde’s perspective of life in the United States was vastly different from her male counterparts. In Lorde’s work she discusses her first observations of how woman were treated in America. She states “since my parents shared all making of policy and decision, in my child’s eye my mother must have been other than woman” (Lorde, 16). At a young age Lorde was able to recognize that woman were often left out of the conversations and having a voice made people view you differently. In Sister Outsider Lorde explores the position of African American women in the United States in connection with how they are viewed by other women of color, white woman and men. Lorde states “Black women being told that we can be somehow better, and are worse, but never equal. To Black men. To other women. To human beings” (Lorde 160). The observations on the treatment of women of color formed a new dynamic that other individuals had left out; leading her to find solace as well as her place in the Soviet revolution. Including women especially women of color in the conversation, in which their feelings, thoughts, and experiences were often times disregarded, created the opportunity for the soviet revolution to be a more appealing outlet for women that were frustrated with their

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Moreover, Lorde states in Sister Otsider: Essays and Speeches that; “Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world.” (Lorde 115).

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In the book Ar’n’t I a women the author, Deborah Gray White, explains how the life was for the slave women in the Southern plantations. She reveals to us how the slave women had to deal with difficulties of racism as well as dealing with sexism. Slave women in these plantations assumed roles within the family as well as the community; these roles were completely different to the roles given to a traditional white female. Deborah Gray White shows us how black women had a different experience from the black men and the struggle they had to maintain their sense of womanhood against all odds, resist sexual oppression, and keep their families together. In the book the author describes two different types of women, “Jezebel” and “Mammy” they

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In September of 1979, Audre Lorde, poet, spoke about the impossibility of dismantling the patriarchy through oppressive means. The black feminist woman, Lorde, who has cancer at the point of this speech, uses ethos, pathos, and logos in order to guilt the audience into making a change of how black feminists are represented. Ethos is the building of the author's credibility in order to become more persuasive because people tend to believe people who they deem likable or respectable. “I agreed to take part in a New York University Institute for the Humanities conference a year ago, with the understanding that I would be commenting upon papers dealing with the role of difference within the lives of American women: difference of race, sexuality, class, and age. The absence of these considerations weakens any feminist discussion of the personal and the political.”

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The excerpt I chose to reflect on is called “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” by Claudia Jones (1949). Jones express the concerns that women of color in her time suffer from the neglect and degradation they receive throughout their lives. During this time, the reason many African American women go through the struggles in their community originated from the notion that the “bourgeoisie is fearful of the militancy of the Negro woman” (108). In my opinion, they have every right to be afraid of African American women. As Jones stated nicely "once Negro women undertake action, the militancy of the whole Negro people, and thus of the anti-imperialist coalition, is greatly enhanced" (108).

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William Edward Burghardt(W.E.B) Du Bois was one of the most prominent African- American protest leaders in the 20th century. He was a scholar and activist. He co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) in 1909. He also attended a school in Nashville, Tennessee called Fisk University.

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However, Lorde firmly disagrees with this ‘silent’ attitude and throughout her life she spoke out and refused to stay silent, therefore Maureen Mahoney claims that; “The strength and resistance of Lorde’s own adult voice was no doubt fed by these paradoxes of power and powerlessness, experienced acutely and personally, in a delicately negotiated balance between words and silence” (621). It could be argued that Audre Lorde learned how to find her voice from her sister Helen; “I had finally found out what my sisters did at home at night […], they told each other stories” and “I thought that the very idea of telling stories and not getting whipped for telling untrue was the most marvellous thing I could think of” (Lorde 46). Additionally, Helen is the first out of three women to whom Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is dedicated, and Barbara DiBernard states that; “Lorde’s identity as Zami, a black lesbian poet, is formed through her relationships with other women” (199). Another woman important for breaking Lorde’s silence is Gennie, their connection is crucial in sustaining Lorde as a female writer; “Gennie’s suicide affected Lorde profoundly and has been a major impetus for much of her work” (DiBernard 200). First of all, a poem for Gennie is encountered in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name which Lorde wrote after her suicide.

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