I know the anger lies inside of me like I know the beat of my heart and the taste of my spit. It is easier to be furious than to be yearning. Easier to crucify myself in you than to take on the threatening universe of whiteness by admitting that we are worth wanting each other.
Interpretation
The quote explores the complexities of anger and love, emphasizing the difficulty of vulnerability.
Audre Lorde's quote delves into the internal struggle between anger and yearning. It highlights how anger can often serve as a defensive shield against the vulnerabilities of longing and desire. The speaker acknowledges that it is easier to express fury than to confront the deeper emotional truth of wanting connection and intimacy. The reference to a 'threatening universe of whiteness' points to societal pressures that complicate these feelings, suggesting that admitting love and the desire for connection can be fraught with challenges.
In practice
In a discussion about emotional challenges in relationships, this quote can highlight the difficulty of expressing true feelings.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.
There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
There's always someone asking you to underline one piece of yourself - whether it's Black, woman, mother, dyke, teacher, etc. - because that's the piece that they need to key in to. They want to dismiss everything else.
There are people with Asperger's whom I've met who certainly would be very upset to learn they'd hurt another person's feelings. They often have very strong moral consciences and moral codes. They care about not hurting people.
Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts ... good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don't hurt. They're not painful. That's not just with somebody you want to marry, but it's with the friends that you choose. It's with the people you surround yourselves with.
You know, those of us who leave our homes in the morning and expect to find them there when we go back - it's hard for us to understand what the experience of a refugee might be like.
They who go Feel not the pain of parting; it is they Who stay behind that suffer.
These impossible women! How they do get around us! The poet was right: Can't live with them, or without them.
One of the things that makes a Negro unpleasant to white folk is the fact that he suffers from their injustice. He is thus a standing rebuke to them.
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