Don’t miss appended quotes from Audre Lord.
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RE SALLY ARMSTRONG
I highly recommend click & listen: http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/ID/2340427936/
Thanks to Janet for sending the link; she writes:
Holy shit! (if I may be so bold)
I have written & just recently — about the power of conversation CONVERSATION
You can read it here if U wish http://janetsplanet.ca/?p=11295
but never mind
Instead, listen to this podcast of Sally Armstrong talking about her experiences in the world
(INSERT: Janet’s posting is worth your while, too.)
OMG — “silence is violence” — what a quote, what an insight!
http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/ID/2340427936/
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QUOTES FROM AUDRE LORDE:
source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/18486.Audre_Lorde
“Your silence will not protect you.” ― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
“If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive.” ― Audre Lorde
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.” ― Audre Lorde
“I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.” ― Audre Lorde
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you…. What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language.”
I began to ask each time: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?” Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, “disappeared” or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What’s the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it’s personal. And the world won’t end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don’t miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” And at last you’ll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.” ― Audre Lorde
“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” ― Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems
“and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive” ― Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” ― Audre Lorde
“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.” ― Audre Lorde
“A Litany for Survival
For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children’s mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours:
For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive.
And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.” ― Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn: Poems
“I am my best work – a series of road maps, reports, recipes, doodles, and prayers from the front lines.” ― Audre Lorde
“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.” ― Audre Lorde
“Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.” ― Audre Lorde
“But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.” ― Audre Lorde
“Revolution is not a one time event. ” ― Audre Lorde
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” ― Audre Lorde
“Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.” ― Audre Lorde
“I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.” ― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. ” ― Audre Lorde
“We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.” ― Audre Lorde
“Some women wait for themselves around the next corner and call the empty spot peace but the opposite of living is only not living and the stars do not care.” ― Audre Lorde
“Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.” ― Audre Lorde
“If you come as softly
As wind within the trees
You may hear what I hear
See what sorrow sees.
If you come as lightly
As threading dew
I will take you gladly
Nor ask more of you.
You may sit beside me
Silent as a breath
Only those who stay dead
Shall remember death.
And if you come
I will be silent
Nor speak harsh words to you.
I will not ask you why, now.
Or how, or what you do.
We shall sit here, softly
Beneath two different years
And the rich earth between us
Shall drink our tears.” ― Audre Lorde
“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.” ― Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals
“Without community, there is no liberation.” ― Audre Lorde
“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes–everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!” ― Audre Lorde
“I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.” ― Audre Lorde
“Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing.” ― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill…For the master’s tools will not dismantle the master’s house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.” ― Audre Lorde
“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” ― Audre Lorde