I am mindful that yesterday, November 17, was the 33rd anniversary of Audre Lorde’s death at her home on the island of St. Croix.
In the summer of 1986, a wise friend put Audre Lorde’s "Sister Outsider" in my hands and my life has never been the same. My friend knew I was heading into a year of solitude to wrestle with the demons of fear that had kept me in the closet. She said that if I was taking books with me into this year-long retreat, I must take Sister Outsider.
I was in the first week of my retreat when I opened Sister Outsider and scanned the table of contents. The title of her fourth essay intrigued me: “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” But reading that essay for the first time was like being hit in the stomach.
"Your silence will not protect you."
"In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear—fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or 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)
I was angry. How dare she rip away my defenses? I put the book away, didn’t even want to look at it, and I let several weeks pass before I could touch it again. But the words I had read in that essay haunted me, and I returned to read that essay again and again throughout that year of solitude.
"We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us." (Audre Lorde)
Looking back, I can say without hyperbole: more than any other single thing, wrestling with Audre Lorde and the essays she penned brought me out of the closet. That’s why, in 1990, after hearing Audre Lorde speak in Ann Arbor, I stood in line for more than an hour, waiting to talk with her. I needed to tell her face to face what she had given me.
Sometimes I enjoy reading a book because I resonate with what the author is expressing and admire how the author has put words to things I have felt or experienced. But there are other authors, like Audre Lorde, who I return to again and again, because they invite me to dive deeper than I have ever dared go.
That is why I have quoted her essays in workshops I have led, classes I have taught, and sermons I have preached. That is why, 39 years after being gifted this precious book, I am still reading Sister Outsider.