So it is better to speak, remembering we were never meant to survive.
I am a Black Lesbian Feminist Warrior Poet Mother, stronger for all my identities, and I am indivisible.
We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the deepest life force, a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way.
The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation .
Anger is loaded with information and energy.
I started writing because I had a need inside of me to create something that was not there.
You are the one that you are looking for.
Women are powerful and dangerous.
My anger has meant pain to me but it has also meant survival, and before I give it up I'm going to be sure that there is something at least as powerful to replace it on the road to clarity.
Divide and conquer must become define and empower.
Nothing I accept about myself can be used against me to diminish me. I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or a chisel to remind you of your me-ness, as I discover you in myself.
You cannot use someone else's fire. You can only use your own. And in order to do that, you must first be willing to believe that you have it.
I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.
Black women have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the depersonalization of racism.
Longer Version:
The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines the human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need -- the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting. It's not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.
There are no new pains.
Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.
But the true feminist deals out of a lesbian consciousness whether or not she ever sleeps with women.
We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.
And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength.
I became more courageous by doing the very things I needed to be courageous for-first, a little, and badly. Then, bit by bit, more and better. Being avidly-sometimes annoy-ingly-curious and persistent about discovering how others were doing what I wanted to do.
Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge.
Longer Version:
Our feelings are our most genuine paths to knowledge. They are chaotic, sometimes painful, sometimes contradictory, but they come from deep within us. And we must key into those feelings... This is how new visions begin.
When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.
Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever -- only, nothing is eternal.
There are lesbians, God knows... if you came up through lesbian circles in the forties and fifties in New York... who were not feminist and would not call themselves feminists.
The sixties were characterized by a heady belief in instantaneous solutions.
Part of the lesbian consciousness is an absolute recognition of the erotic within our lives and, taking that a step further, dealing with the erotic not only in sexual terms.
But, on the other hand, I get bored with racism too and recognize that there are still many things to be said about a Black person and a White person loving each other in a racist society.
Attend me, hold me in your muscular flowering arms, protect me from throwing any part of myself away.
Art is not living. It is the use of living.
I would like to do another piece of fiction dealing with a number of issues: Lesbian parenting, the 1960's, and interracial relationships in the Lesbian and Gay community.
I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't.
Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
Longer Version:
The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.
In other words, I would be giving in to a myth of sameness which I think can destroy us.
When I use my strength in the service of my vision it makes no difference whether or not I am afraid.
When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.