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.
And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.
That is to say, I pray for you. And there's an intimacy in it. That's the truth.
I'm not as angry as I used to be. But I can get in touch with that anger pretty quickly if I feel my space is being invaded or somebody is not treating me with the respect that I think I want.
Only married people understand you can be miserable and happy at the same time.
Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.
The whites come to applaud a Negro performer just like the colored do. When you've got the respect of white and colored, you can ease a lot of things.
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