“And there are so many silences to be broken.” This powerful final line of “The Transformations of Silence into Language and Action” by black, female, lesbian, poet, Audre Lorde is used to conclude her speech to the Modern Language Association’s “Lesbian and Literature Panel.” In this speech Audre Lorde is speaking to a panel of women on how to actively communicate with one another after reflecting on her life due to a near death experience. She claims that they should be putting aside their differences as women and realizing that they need to communicate and “speak up” to thrive. Audre throughout her speech prioritizes this message and attempts to instill this desire to speak up amongst, not just the women in the panel, but rather to more
In James Gilbert’s book, A Cycle of Outrage - America’s Reaction to the Juvenile Delinquent in the 1950’s, he cites examples of why Americans were “puzzled and distressed by the activities of postwar teenagers.” In an excerpt from his book, he describes that the increased worry about the changing culture of American teenagers is partly due to the rise in technology during the 1950’s (12). Unlike in the past, teenagers were able to rapidly shift their speech, fashion, taste in music, and overall attitude in a uniform manner due to access to mass media. As technology was on the rise, so was the number of students attending high schools. () This, in turn, allowed for even more solidarity amongst the teenage population.
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.”
Everyone who has been through adolescence knows that it is one of the most challenging times of their lives. However, in "Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde, "Momentum" by Catherine Doty, and "Popularity" by Adam Bagdasarian, the authors think that adolescence is a time that is very hard for adolescents. The authors think that the time of adolescence is a time where children think that the world is ending, and that it is a matter of life and death. They communicate this idea through the use of extended metaphors, repetition, and hyperbole. Overall, the authors agree on one idea, which is that adolescence is a very difficult time.
The boy gives her the impression that he knows she gains from his struggle, “I don’t know if I am in his power…or if he’s in my power” (14-18). The woman possibly begins to question the idea that the boy is actually living in a subservient white world and wonders who actually has the power now as they sit face to face in person. The woman may be at the top of the social pyramid but is now held at the mercy of this boy who sits across from her. This portrays that there are undistinguished lines between black and whites and leads the woman to doubt if her fortune and social position can defeat the boy’s hostility towards her.
Audre Lorde’s poem “Hanging Fire” focuses on many issues that show up in a teenager’s life. Contemplating death, problems with a sexist society, and the fear of isolation in her home. She is a fourteen-year-old black girl, thinking the world is against her in a lot of ways. She thinks her life is dull and boring.
She understood that while she was under the dominance of white men, she had predominance over ladies of another ethnic background, such as women of color. White privilege is seen as an unacknowledged and standard norm of the majority, however it is within this “unseen norm” that outlines the racial divides of this country. From
She promotes to her audience “… how white men failed Hilary Clinton, failed the country – it was white men who gave Donald Trump his victory…” (8) March begins to get the audience’s attention by her intense remarks early into the article. As a white male reading this essay or someone that voted for Trump they feel attacked by this statement. Therefore, this statement makes the attacked audience feel the same slap in the face; she felt when Hilary didn’t win the election, which provokes the readers, especially white men that voted for Trump to reevaluate their choice in voting for him.
In the 1980’s black women are faced with a lot pressure in society, Because women of color are both women and racial minorities, they face more pressure in which lower economic opportunities due to their race and their gender. This pressure is reflected both in the jobs available to them and in their lower pay. Also because they are women of color they are likely to be the giver of the house and also within the families. Through the use of anecdotes,rhetorical questions, anaphora, ethos and metaphors, "In The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism, Audre Lorde argues that women of color need to respond to racism with anger spurred from their fear and that not a bad thing depends on how anger is portrayed.
In the case African American women, they confront backlash from not assimilating into the ideal “white
This poem its mainly about a women , whose personifying her self on a diamond. She thinks its funny how a diamond can come from flames and still be something beautiful . In the poem she is a diamond whom society is trying to break down despite her natural brilliance. Audre Lorde wrote this poem to open her self and to let the world know how words sometimes can hurt people. She definitely feels that words are very important and sometimes they can have different meanings.
Change takes places everywhere, everyday. If we as humans experience change on a daily basis, it should be no surprise that even “The Land of the Free” must eventually evolve. A Fierce Discontent by Yale alumni Indiana University historian and Michael McGerr documents this change that spread throughout America, which is known as the Progressive Movement. Michael McGerr believed that “the people and struggles of that age of “fierce discontent” a century ago still command our attention” (McGerr, xiii), which sheds a little light as to why he chose to write about the Progressive Era. It was social and political reform and activism that made up the Progressive Era and
In the poem “Hanging Fire” by Audre Lorde we feel sympathy toward the speaker. “Hanging Fire” is about a fourteen year old girl who is going through a stage in her life that everyone goes through, which is puberty. Unlike most people she didn’t have someone there to guide her through this stage in her life. In addition, she didn’t get the support a girl needs from her mother when going through puberty. Throughout the poem she describes several insecurities she faces and how her mother is unapproachable.
Hanging Fire Hanging Fire is a poem that written by Audre Lorde, and it was published in the 1978 collection The Black Unicorn. The poem has been reprinted in several literary anthologies, such as the Norton Introduction to Literature. The author Audre Lorde described herself as lesbian, mother, black, warrior and a poet. Hanging fire is about a teenage girl who had some problem with herself and with her mother. In this poem shows how she feels alone, lonely, and worry.
The discrimination against the white race begins with a gradual distinct treatment of the African Americans who appear to have a trace of the white race. Helene proves to have a more formal dialect as she asks for “the bathroom” (23) and the black woman cannot understand until Helene finally refers to it as “the toilet” (23). The difference in word choice distinct Helene from the African Americans in the Bottom. The fact that Helene also has fairer skin than the African Americans gives the black woman a reason to believe Helene has a trace of white. Therefore, when Helene approaches the black woman on the train, “[the woman fastens her eyes]…on the thick velvet, the fair skin, [and] the high tone voice” (23), as if surprised and shocked to see an African American women appear in such a manner.
