Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the challenges faced by black writers who venture beyond established narratives and expectations.
Audre Lorde emphasizes the restrictive nature of predefined identities within black literary circles, illustrating how writers who defy societal expectations are marginalized. This marginalization mirrors the silence caused by systemic racism, suggesting that true artistic expression can often meet resistance not just from external forces, but also from within one's own community.
In practice
During a panel on literary diversity, one might reference this quote to discuss the importance of breaking stereotypes in black literature.
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.
I don't really know why an idea comes to me. But all of a sudden, an idea comes and from experience I can intuit what something means when an interesting line pops up. Or I can intuit what an interesting choice might be. And I can try a couple of different choices, and see which one feels right, and then continue the song to see where it goes.
That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain - they cannot be otherwise.
My cooking is simply ingredients plus umami.
The avant-garde theater is fun; it is free-swinging, bold, iconoclastic, and often wildly, wildly funny. If you will approach it with childlike innocence - putting your standard responses aside, for they do not apply - if you will approach it on its own terms, I think you will be in for a liberating surprise.
I'd been painting rats for three years before someone said 'that's clever it's an anagram of art' and I had to pretend I'd known that all along.
Rent is about a community celebrating life, in the face of death and AIDS, at the turn of the century.
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