Table of Contents

Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Create Your Own Fire: Audre Lorde and the Tradition of Black Radical Thought Rudolph P. Byrd
Part I: From Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light
The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action
Sexism: An American Disease in Blackface
Sadomasochism: Not About Condemnation
I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities
Apartheid USA
Turning the Beat Around: Lesbian Parenting 1986
A Burst of Light: Living With Cancer
Part II: My Words Will Be There
Eva's Man by Gayle Jones: A Review
Self-Definition and My Poetry
Introduction: Movement in Black by Pat Parker
"My Words Will Be There" from Black Women Writers
Introduction to Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Suren ihrer Geschichte
Preface: Need: A Chorale for Black Women Voices
Poet As Teacher--Human As Poet--Teacher as Human
Poetry Makes Something Happen
My Mother's Mortar
Part III: Difference and Survival
Difference and Survival: An Address at Hunter College
The First Black Feminist Retreat
"When Will the Ignorance End?" Keynote Address at the First National Third World Lesbian and Gay Conference
Litany of Commitment: An Address Delivered at the March on Washington, (1983)
Commencement Address: Oberlin College
There Is No Hierarchy of Oppression
What is at Stake in Lesbian and Gay Publishing Today: the Bill Whitehead Award Ceremony
Is Your Hair Still Political
Part IV: Reflections
Johnnetta B. Cole: Audre Lorde: My Shero, My Teacher, My Sister Friend
Alice Walker: Audre's Voice
bell hooks: The Imagination of Justice
Gloria I. Joseph: Remembering Audre Lorde
Beverly Guy-Sheftall: Conclusion: Bearing Witness: the Legacy of Audre Lorde
Contributors
Selected Bibliography
Chronology
Index

About the Author

Rudolph P. Byrd is the Goodrich C. White Professor of American Studies in the Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts and the Department of African American Studies, and is the Founding Director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University.

Johnnetta Betsch Cole is President Emerita of Spelman College and Bennett College for Women, and Professor Emerita of Emory University. She is currently Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is Founding Director of the Women's Research and Resource Center and Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies at Spelman College. She is also an adjunct professor at Emory University's Institute for Women's Studies.

Reviews

"This book, clearly a labor of love by three colleagues who also call themselves friends, meets its objectives and more...This invaluable collections enables us to hear [Lorde's] voice again and to use the life lessons she shared with us."--Women's Review of Books
"A thorough survey, to say the least...I Am Your Sister reveals [Lorde's] legacy anew."--Bitch Magazine
"The editors of this abundant feast of a book remind us of the importance of [Audre Lorde's] work, which for 40 years has served as a foundation and catalyst for questions of identity, difference, power and social justice. There is much to ponder, discuss, teach and revere in this compilation."--Ms. Magazine
"I Am Your Sister is a collection for those who want and need to be introduced to Audre Lorde's thinking, and it is a great anthology for those who have read and been inspired by Lorde's writing all of their lives...a celebration, an honoring, and a thoughtful presentation of who Lorde was...an eye opener to how the struggles of past times continue to be what we grapple with today...a tool for survival--a teacher to help us realize our possibilities
for change."--Feminist Review
"I Am Your Sister combines some of Lorde's most powerful essays with previously unavailable writings, as well as reflections on her work from other influential artists and activists."--Southern Voice
"In 'harsh and urgent clarity' Audre Lorde spoke directly to 'that chaos which exists before understanding,' insisting on work to be done, the necessity for difficult alliances, for standing up to be counted, and for inclusive liberation. The poetic realism of these essays and speeches resonates here and now."--Adrienne Rich, poet, essayist, activist
"Audre Lorde's unpublished writings, combined with her now classic essays, reveal her to be as relevant today as during the latter twentieth century when she first spoke to us. This new collection should be read by all who understand justice to be indivisible, embracing race, gender, sexuality, class, and beyond, and who recognize, as she so succinctly put it, that 'there is no separate surivial.'"--Angela Y. Davis, author of Women, Race &
Class and Are Prisons Obsolete?
"Provacative and profound, the work of poet, essayist, and autobiographer, Audre Lorde, has positively affected scholars and writers, teachers and students, feminists, gays, lesbians, and indeed countless individuals in the United States and elsewhere who have struggled with the question of how to integrate aesthetic, cultural, and political concerns. Now, with the publication of this collection of some of Lorde's best writing, we all have the opportunity to
consider seriously Lorde's legacy and to continue in our efforts to resist the silencing of our various communities, our various selves in these wondrous and difficult times."--Robert F. Reid-Pharr,
author of Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual