Sister Outsider

Always good to learn where theoretical constructs develop in our society and clearly Audre Lorde, author of Sister Outsider, had something to do with the beginnings of “intersectionality.”  Well, what is “intersectionality?”  As Lorde discusses her understanding of who she identifies as a person, the reader begins to learn about Lorde’s upbringing and how she begins to think about herself through gender, orientation, race, and socio-economic backgrounds that merge to a complex being.  The book is a series of essays and speeches that Lorde writes/speaks about over the course of a fifteen year period, beginning in the late 1960s through the early 1980s.  Lorde was born in New York City to mixed immigrant parents.  Her parents emigrated from the Caribbean yet were born in Grenada (which is the focus of the closing article).  Lorde was married to a man and had two children before she met her eventual life partner, a white female.  This love combination added one more “identity” to her complex understanding of self.  Lorde uses some of the challenges her children met from classmates and their parents while being in school.  They were ridiculed for not only being black, but children of a lesbian and mixed race family.  Lorde tells of her anger at society’s inability to embrace differences in her interview with Adrienne Rich and other various short interviews and essays.  Not being “white enough” compared to her two siblings and trying to bleach her skin to “fit” into society were a couple of her childhood memories.  The level of hatred and bigotry that Lorde faced fueled her desire to speak out as an adult even though she faced attacks from fellow feminists, blacks, and lesbians not clearly appreciating the depth of the various identities of the author.  The book provides a brilliant perspective of the 1980s and how our society was on the precipice of the debate for gay marriage and acceptance of those outside society’s “privileged” groups.  This will be seen as a precursor to what our society will look back on 100 years from now and say, what was the big issue? (Or at least let’s hope).  Brash, angry and capable of holding her own against the fiercest of enemies, including a fourteen year battle with cancer, Lorde is afraid of no one.  This book is a nice mix of readings that captures a woman ahead of her time.