Audre

“In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear — fear of contempt, of censure, of some judgment, of recognition, of challenge, of annihilation. But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live…. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength”–Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (2007).

I believe that being private isolates. It crushes and destroys. What is most personal is most worth sharing. Illness, aging, love, passion, death, betrayal, loss, joy. This is the stuff of art, connection, and power or politics. Connection is how we stay alive. 

I grew up with family secrets that protected men who violated children and abused women. I grew up in an Appalachian town where secrecy protected the Ku Klux Klan, where lace curtains and family mythologies imprisoned us with men (and a few women) who were bent on using us and anyone they deemed inferior, destroying us if they couldn’t use us. It was necessary for any who were judged inferior to bond and support each other, and the only way that could happen is if we told the truth, not just to a therapist but in public, in community.

So when I met Audre Lorde in 1980 and heard her say, “Without community, there can be no liberation,” I knew what she meant. My photo of her is on her Wikipedia page, and as writer, as performer, as teacher, as a human being, I have found her words to be true. So I am reading the new biography, Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (2024). I’m reading the story of all of us who rebelled, who said no to domination and control. We said no by saying what is true for us. I know of no other way.

This day was many conversations and connections and no going out of my apartment.