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Go read Audre Lorde
As I was getting into feminist research I ran across Kimberle Crenshaw’s intersectionality paper, a totemic piece of writing that solidified the notion that no two women’s experiences are the same and that we need to see a given person through all their axis of identity rather than just one. I ate intersectionality up for breakfast, along the way it helped me see the world for all its hues rather than a palette of two or three. Then I discovered black feminism, or rather had it pretty much run me over as I explored the edges of intersectional history. Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider demanded my attention, her ideas and words flowing out in a torrent of anger and frustration at feminists who only saw “woman” as the axis of oppression and ignored all other aspects. I was hooked, bel hooked so to say.
As a white middle-class university educated trans woman it came as a jolt to come face to face with a woman who’s lived experiences were both radically different to my own and yet contained a kernel of personal truth. Her notions of self, of being taught to be small to avoid strangers wrath, of having a smouldering anger at her personal core that lashed out in the wrong places, and of being alienated from her kith due to her loves and desires resonates deeply with me. Lorde is an amazing writer, someone whose craft was honed in over decades, yet still contains a raw honesty that is hard to find in white feminism.
