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Author	Audre Lorde
Country	United States
Language	English
Publisher	Crossing Press
Publication date	April 1, 1984
Binding	Trade Paperback
Pages	190
ISBN	9780895941411

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Sister Outsider

Sister Outsider is a collection of essays and speeches by Audre Lorde, black lesbian poet and feminist writer. The book is considered canonical to modern feminisms and has been formative in the development of contemporary theories. (cite!)

In fifteen essays and speeches dating from 1976 to 1984[1] (Christian, 6), Lorde explores the complexities of intersectional identity, drawing from her personal experiences with sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, ageism, and other forms of oppression.[2][3] Sister Outsider is considered one of Lorde's most influential works of non-fiction prose and has contributed to the development of contemporary feminist theory.[4] The collection was first published in 1984 by Crossing Press, and later in 2007 by Ten Speed Press of the Crown Publishing Group, of Random House, Inc., New York.[1]

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Publication

Lorde signed a contract with The Crossing Press on November 19, 1982 with a projected publication date of May 31, 1984 (Warrior Poet 315). In doing so, she became the first major lesbian author the press was to sign, despite the firm's policy of not taking books represented by agents (Warrior Poet 316). Lorde expressed to her agent that she felt rushed into signing the contract that provided an advance against royalties for a mere $100. The book was ultimately a huge financial success.

Republication

Themes

The oxymoron of the title "Sister Outsider" expresses Lorde's assertion that her identity as a Black, woman, lesbian, mother of a daughter and a son, poet, and partner in a racially mixed relationship provides her a unique vision as both a sister and an outsider, which can be used as a catalyst for change (Barala 72). Throughout the fifteen essays and speeches of Sister Outsider, Lorde challenges sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class (http://medhum.med.nyu.edu/view/382). She asserts difference as a dynamic force and means of empowerment (Barala 733) that should be recognized and used for creative change (Christian, 6). Within Sister Outsider, Lorde suggests that her analysis of the concept of difference be applied to the next stage of feminism, in response to the lack of acknowledgement of differences between women that has occurred within the mainstream feminist movement (Barala 72).

Content

Introduction (include if only in some publications?)
Notes from a Trip to Russia
- Edited journal entries from Lorde's two-week trip to Russia in 1976 as invited American observer to the African-Asian Writers conference sponsored by the Union of Soviet Writers. (p13)
Poetry is Not a Luxury
- First published first in Chrysalis: A Magazine of Female Culture, no. 3 in 1977.
The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action
- Delivered at the Modern Language Association's "Lesbian Literature Panel" in Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977. Published in Sinister Wisdom in 1978 and The Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco) in 1980.
Scratching the Surface: Some Notes on Barriers to Women and Loving
- First published in The Black Scholar, vol. 9, no. 7 in 1978
Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
- Delivered at the Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women at Mount Holyoke College on August 25, 1978. Published first as a pamphlet by Out & Out Books and later by Kore Press.
Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface
- First published as "The Great American Disease" in the May-June issue of The Black Scholar, vol. 10, no. 9 in 1979 in response to "The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists" by Robert Staples in March-April 1979 issue of The Black Scholar, vol. 10, no. 8.
An Open Letter to Mary Daly
- **
Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist's Response
- First published in Conditions: Four in 1979
An Interview: Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich
- First published in Signs, vol. 6, no. 4 in summer of 1981. Edited from three hours of audio tapes recorded on August 30, 1979 in Montague, Massachusetts. Commissioned by Marilyn Hacker, guest editor of Woman Poet: The East.
The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House
- From comments at "The Personal and the Political Panel" at the Second Sex Conference on September 29, 1979 in New York.
Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference
- Paper delivered at the Copeland Colloquium at Amherst College in April 1980.
The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism
- Keynote presentation at the National Women's Studies Association Conference in Storrs, Connecticut in June 1981.
Learning from the 60s
- Talk delivered at Harvard University in February 1982 for Malcolm X Weekend.
Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger
- An abbreviated version was published in essence, vol. 14, no.6 in October 1983.
Grenada Revisted: An Interim Report
- Grenada Revisited: written while book typeset, final hour inclusion (Warrior Poet 336)

Reception

Warrior Poet biography pg 346

"Met with resounding praise"
reviewer for Publishers Weekly called the work "eye-opener"
"Thulan Davis and Cheryl Evereete's joint review for Essence magazine singled out the essay "Greanda Revisted: An Interim Report" at "the post powerful" of the fifteen in the collection, and pronounced the whole work as adding up to "a personal, thought-provoking portrait of a multifaceted artist.""
"Kate Walter review for Village Voice thought Lorde's focus on difference as a path toward creative change left unclear exactly how women and men could transcend oppressions ingrained in childhood".. noting "the ideas shaping Sister Outsider were intentionally provocative"
theme for week, "The Language of Difference" at Sept. 1985 150th Women's festival in Melbourne Australia was inspired by Sister Outsider and the forthcoming program was structured around the notion of difference

Tana Love supported in New Directions for Women

Warrior Poet--Favorable Booklist review: recognized her as 'one of the foremost black feminist voices of our time' and Sister Outsider as deserving to "be widely distributed" and took note of 'Lordes central position in contemporary literature, in the feminist movement, in lesbian politics, and in the ongoing struggle against racism." the review confirmed Lorde's sense that her work now had enough stature to survive her (when worried about cancer) 341

Simmons: book was life-changing (195)

"the editor of Sister Outsider, Nancy Bereano, thought of both the collection and Lorde’s work as theoretical. As she noted,“There can be no doubt that Sister Outsider, a collection of essays and speeches drawn from the past eight years of this Black lesbian feminist’s nonfiction prose, makes absolutely clear to many what some already knew: Audre Lorde’s voice is central to the development of contemporary feminist theory. She is at the cutting edge of consciousness.”

https://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Erotic-Life-of-Racism/?viewby=reading+list&categoryid=455&sort=newest:

Letter to Mary Daly:

Transformation of Silence into action described as timeless (http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.15767/feministstudies.40.1.190#pdf_only_tab_contentsSimmons 193)

p 194: taught "silence will not protect me and that silence is not golden"
Inspried "Silence…Broken," an experimental narrative short about an African American lesbian’s refusal to be silent about racism, sexism and homophobia. The film can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN8WHR8ye7s&list=UUPLJEZvnPfdsxOwIBio49dw

Poetry is Not a Luxury:

poetry was a way to enact an intimate scrutiny needed for personal and social transformation, a way to critically engage the self to set the stage for new interventions and articulations. In this way, poetry would be the linchpin between the personal and the social, "[giving] name to those ideas which are—until the poem—nameless and formless, about to be birthed but already felt" (36). http://www.jstor.org/stable/23333505
theory about engaging the self as a way to initiate social trans formations w
"Poetry Is Not a Luxury" was written within a historical moment characterized by a renewed attention to the senses and affect.

Uses of the Erotic: the Erotic as Power

Lorde set out to establish the erotic both as a social practice and as a technique of the self
Lorde works to expand the function of the erotic, seeing sexuality as activating and illuminating all parts of lif
"Uses of the Erotic" was Lorde s attempt to theorize the erotic as a will to create new social possibilities.
It seems easier, "cleaner," to keep the erotic separate from theorymaking. But what Zami and Sister Outsider make clear is that such separation is unnatural division. (Barala 72)

Transformation of Silence Into Action

Audre Lorde's speech, "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action, "sheds light on the margins of rhetoric in the sense of the public speech because she examines factors that may cause some people to remain silent while enabling others to speak and act. "Margins" refers both to the parameters employed for defining a practice and the relative place or value of varied activities exemplifying the practice. Lorde interweaves her commentary on the silence surrounding breast cancer with insights about silence drawn from her experiences as a member of several subordinated communities, especially as they relate to the misuse of power to silence those who are different. Her speech comments on silencing and power, sexism, verbal abuse, violence and sexualized aggression, shame, the taboo, and hostile social environments. Paradoxically, Lorde's speech is as much about the possibilities of rhetoric as its limits (https://login.peach.conncoll.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.19255417&site=eds-live)
There is a fierce fearlessness in "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," an essay whose title exemplifies what Lorde would most have happen-translation of the hidden and therefore fearful and therefore unspoken into the language of vigorous dialogue (Barala, 73)

Uses of Anger

Anger is the normal response to racism, that other thorn in feminism's side, just as fury is the appropriate reaction when old attitudes do not change but are hidden beneath liberal rhetoric. In "The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism,” (Barala, 73)...To turn from this anger is to turn from insight, is to deny change in favor of the familiar

Uses of the Erotic:

https://login.peach.conncoll.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=edsgcl.322930966&site=eds-live

Notes

LizzyEkenah (talk) 05:28, 15 September 2015 (UTC)