Wellness, is the radical idea that self-care is self-preservation - Audre Lorde

So Audre Lorde is one of my favorite feminist writers and poets.  I was first introduced to her in my feminist studies class in undergrad.  I heard a lecture about Ms. Lorde via Zoom vis-à-vis a talk organized by Politics and Prose, a progressive bookstore in D.C. tonight and here are my take-aways:

Her Essays:

"The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action"

Talks about how poetry is a necessity, poetry is a tool for change, poetry is radical

poetry is not a luxury

poetry helps us to break silence --> helps us to answer what is next?

"The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House"

MOre about her:

She was a person of contradictions

Audre Lorde said that Sexism is America's disease.  She was her own black woman.  She stood up in ways that meant she was going to suffer.  Lorde creating philosophy and theory

She was a poet, a warrior

Black women live in alternative realities and she was doing intersectionality before this word became known (intersectionality has always been there)

She also taught us that anger is healthy, we should use anger

She asked what is and what is not political

We are going through hard times and there is a difference in survival --> we (as women) have to be able to survive all of this

Women  have been marginalized in the discourse, marginalized in healthcare.  Writers help us and will help me carrying me forward (e.g. Toni Morrison) --> these writers motivate us to keep writing, to write myself into this narrative of this country, the narrative of the world

We have a "collection of pens" --> pens that ancestors have given me

It is important to have a record.  She knew everything --> she knew something about keeping a record

As women, so much of our record have been erased --> so much of our lives go unwritten, untold

Nobody else can write from my perspective.  Every woman should keep an archive --> we were here, we mattered

The archives are the aesthetics of our lives 

It's okay to be messy so that "THE INK IS all over my fingers"

Writing is my visceral experience - it came out of my body

"She made space for others by speaking out, "with nothing to lose""