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229 pages, Paperback
First published October 2, 2017
I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.Whatever the costs of speaking out, the costs of not speaking out will always be too high: as Lorde reminds us, racism and sexism take lives. Immediately, Ta-Nehisi’s words come to mind: racism is a visceral experience, it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. […] And it is never without fear - of visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgement, of pain, of death. But we have lived through all of those already, in silence, except death.When it comes to speaking out, Lorde just tells it how it is. Speaking out is not easy, will never be easy. It is risky and dangerous and fucking scary, but so is living in silence. So, let’s all boss up and try to create some change with the means at our disposal: our voices.
It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support.As Malcolm stressed, we are not responsible for our oppression, but we must be responsible for our own liberation.