When we create out of our experiences, as feminists of color, women of color, we have to develop those structures that will present and circulate our culture.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of women of color creating their own narratives and cultural frameworks.
Audre Lorde highlights the necessity for women of color to actively shape and share their cultural identities and experiences. By doing so, they challenge existing structures that often marginalize their voices and ensure that their contributions to culture are recognized and valued within broader society.
In practice
In a keynote speech about representation in media, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of authentic storytelling.
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 love having different cultures around, but when the parent culture kind of dissipates, you're left thinking, 'Well, what's going on?'
What makes Harlem special is that at any given time, food seekers can not only find food deeply rooted in Southern, Latin and African traditions, but also can taste the newer Senegalese, Chinese, and Italian influences as well.
When you talk about Lacrosse, you talk about the lifeblood of the six nations. The game is ingrained into our culture and our system and our lives. (the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora)
Whether you look at 'Glee' and its normalization of gay identity or you look at the work of Martin Scorsese and the Italian-American community, American culture is able to take these stories, which are seen as marginalized, and just turn them into American stories. And you don't think twice about it.
The reason I loved working at Boeing was because I loved the idea of air travel as a way of bringing people and cultures together - because when we come together as people and cultures, we realize that we are not that different after all, and when we realize that we are not that different after all, the world becomes a better place.
The working-class black Southern Christian culture I come from still nurtures me, and I mean directly, daily.
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