Transcripts For CSPAN2 Author Discussion On Audre Lorde 2024

Transcripts For CSPAN2 Author Discussion On Audre Lorde 20240711

First a discussion on the late author and active audra lorde, following by eddie glaude on james baldwin. Welcome to the Shomberg Center book festival. We had to reimagine a block long multistaged outdoor philadelphia as a viral one with your favorite write centers opportunity to discover more books. This we we have 35 authors and midraters sharing narratives from the u. S. And uk to west africa and jamaica, each night we go between the past and present like the Shomberg Centers archives and programs. Tonights program, audra lordo features writers roxanne gay, tracy. Something i and mahogany browne. Im the associate director of Public Programs and exhibitions at the Shomberg Center for research in black culture. Were celebrating 95 years of one of the world residents leading cultural institutions devoted to research, preservation and exhibition. Our are care has 11 million ims at that time illuminate the richness of black history and culture and we have met some items v8 digitally. Visit of visit ours website at shomberg. Org for Additional Details and i hope you get a chance to visit our archives on the other side of this quarantine. Thank you for tuning in to the Shomberg Center literary festival. I if youre watching live vai see your litfest website, you can scroll to the bottom and shop all the books featured tonight and also see the weeklong schedule so that you can plan the rest of your week. To give you a head up tomorrow well explore the work of sterling average brown, one over most important and influential figures in the development. Of africanamerican lit tour and criticism in the 20th century. And then we have a daylight authors and books at 1 00 p. M. Some of the awe to authorize which Jacqueline Wood son in conversation with lavar burton, followed by uk authoreded a da, and we have a panel on black comic backs. We close that day with debut author and National Book award long list author, candace ela. We have additional ya authors on saturday, and pa crete colors who this black lives matter one the black lives matter founders who has released a ya addition of her memoir, when they call you a terrorist. So i hope you will check in beyond today for other programs that we have taking place over the shomberg litfest and you can watch this on shomberg shombergcenterlitfest. Org and you, reonehalf them in the coming weeks, this festival continues to expand our long tradition of championing authors of african descent. How fortunate there are three books revisiting the essential writings of audra lorde at this time. Who knew that audra lorde was the person we would need in this moment but i would say that she is always present, she is always needed, and as when she could have chose son many authors to read from last week win we had program around poets she chose two poems by her friend, awe audra lorde and alice walker so im going to introduce the panel so they can drove abuse you to their audre lorde. First mahogany browne, writer organizer and educator. The executive director of a poetry club, and poetry coordinator at st. Franciscome. The author of woke, young poet she will release her first ya novel, chlorine sky in january 2021 and i hope we can host her. She provided the forward for Penguin Classics republication of audre lorde collection of 15 essays and peaches. He next, racksan gay edited the newest release, the selected works of audre lorde. She is a contributing opinion write are for the New York Times, author of books, untamed state. This New York Times best selling, bad feminist, and also the author of world of next is tracy k. Smith, one over to the most celebrated poetes 0 our time, the 22nd United States poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. She author of the critically acclaimed memoir ordinary light and several books of poetry including here Pulitzer Prize winning collection, life on mars. The director of creative writing program. At princeton universe and the chair of the louiser in for the arted. Traced where provide the forward to another republication of audre lordes work available in october. And last but certainly not least is our moderator, tillis who is the Henry Rutgers prefer of africanamerican and African Studies and creating writing at rutgers university. She is a contributing critic at large with the New York Times and a director over the new arts justice and art and activist initiative at express newark. The author of sights of slavery, citizenship and racial democracy in the post civil rights imagination and the cultural memoir in search of the color purple the store of alice walkers masterpiece which comes out in january 2021. To give you few housekeeping were recording the program for the archives but you also the audience bill not be part of the recording. Please be mindful of your fellow odd metamorphosisends in the capacity and thank you for tuning. Well begin with read little from each of ourselves panelists so first we welcome to our virtual stage, roxanne gay to read from the selected works of audre lorde. Hello. Audre lorde is one of those of writer who remains timeless and every time i read and reread and engage with her work im reminded anew why i have always been drawn to her work. Have been reading her prose so tonight aisle going to read a few poems and the first is from her bang, the first cities and this called generations. How a young attempt in our broken differs from age to age. We were brown free girls, loved singing beneath their skin, sun the their hair and their eyes, the taste ofure young voice, manhood flowing like birdness their house. The season of power we went out our terrible promise. Now these are the children we try for temptations that wear our faith and who came back from the latched cities of falsehood. Warnings, the road to nowhere is slippery with our blood. Warning, you need not drink the river to get home. For we purchase bridges with our mothers bloody goals we are more than ten who come to share, not blood but the bloodiness of failure. How the young are tempted and bow trade to slaughter or conformity, the turn of the mirror, times question only. And also from that book, is the poem called if you come softly. If you come softly, as wind win the try outside maw hear what i hear, see what sorrow sees. If you camp as lightly as threading dew ill take you gladly nor ask more of you. You may sit beside me silent as breath only those who stay dead shall remember death. And if you come, i will be silent, nor speak harsh words to you. I will not ask you why now or how or what you do, we shall sit here softly, beneath two different years, and the rich earth between us shall drink our tears. Now lets see. Finally i want to read a poem called who said it was simple. Who said it was simple. There are so many roots to the tree of anger that sometimes the branches shatter before they bear. Women rally before the march, discussing the problematic girls they hired to make them free. And almost white counterman passes a waiting brother to serve them fit and the ladies neither notice or reject the lighter pressured of their slavery but i who am bound by mirror and my bed see causes and color as well as sex, and sit here wondering, which me will survive all these liberations . Thank you guys so much and next we are going to hear from the absolutely wonderful mahogany browne. I just feel like that those three poems bolt any heart racing and arch feels that, too. Thank you for opening with such tenderness. We always think of audre lorde reminding us that your see silence will not protect you. Aisle going read from the collection sister outsider, small piece of an essay she wrote in age, race, class, and sex, women redefining difference, and then ill close with a poem and thank you so much again for having me. Shoutout to shomberg for being the certainly there are vary real differences between us of race, age and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. Is is rather our refusal to recognize the differences and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their affect upon Human Behavior and expectations. Racism, the belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance. Sexism, believing the inherit pressurity of ones sex over thes could at the right too dominate. Ageism, heterosexism, elitism, classism, somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what i call a mythical norm which each one of in howard hearts that is not me. In america this norm is usually designed at white, thin, male, young, health row sexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of powers within the society. Those of us who stand outside that tower often identify one way were different and assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forget ago distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing. By and large within he womens momentum, white women focus on oppression as women and ignore differences of race, sexual preference, class, and age. There is a pretense to the hodge month any of experience covered by the word sisterhood that does not in fact exist. As we move forward, as we move toward, creating a society within which we can each flourish, ageism is another distortion of relationship which interferes withour vision. By ignoring the past we are encouraged to repeat its mistakes. The generation gap is an important social tool for any oppressive society. It if the younger members of a Community View older members of con tellable or suspect or compels they will never be able to join hands and examine the living memory 0 the community no ask the all person question, why . This gives rise to historical am niece zsa zsa forces to us invent the wheel everyday we have to go to the store for bread. Ignore thing difference of race between women and the implications of the differences presents the most serious thrift to the mobilizeddation of women russ joint power. As white women ignore their built yip privilege of whiteness and define woman in termoftheir own experience alone then women of color become other, the outsiders whose experience and tradition is too alien to comprehend. I hope you will take no note and this is testimony. Refusing to recognize different makes it impossible to see the different problems and ditching advertise facing us as women. Thus, in a pate central county system where white skin is a major trap, it is easy for black women to be used the power structure against black women so for black women it is necessary as all times to separate the need odd the opressor from our own legitimate conflict inside our community. The same problem does not exist for white women. Black women and men have shared racist oprecision and still share the different weighed out of the shared oppression we have developed joint defenses and joint vulnerables to each other that are not dupe mix indicating in the White Community with the exception of relationship between jew wish women and jew wish men. On the other hand white women face the patefall of being sells e seduced into joining the oppressor. This possibility does not exist for women of color. The tokenism that is extend to us is notten invitation to join power. Our racial otherness is a visible reality that makes it quite clear for white women theres a wider range of pretend choices and reward for identifying with peyton track cal power and it tools but black bill and christian know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and hatred, no rest and we do not deal if only on the picket line or dark midnight alleys or places where we dare to verbalize our reef sis stance, for us increasingly pie violence in 0 living, super market, classroom, elevator, clinic and schoolyard, fro banker sales woman bus driver the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us. Some problem wed share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will go up to testify again you. We fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the streets and you will turn your backs upon the ropes they are dying. Definitely can read the rest of that. And that sister outer collection and ill close with one short poem. The women dance with swords in hands to mark the time when hey were warriors. I and this is for us. Thank you for left michigan be part of this collective today. I did not fall from the sky, or noh descent like a plague of locusts to drink color and strength from the earth and i do not come like rain as a tribute or symbol for earth becoming. Come as a woman, dark, and open, sometimes i fall like night. Softly. And terrible. Only when i must die in order to rise again. I do not come like a secret warrior with an unsheathed sword in my mouth, hidden beneath my tongue while the blood runs down and out through holes the two sacred mounds on my chest. I come like a whom who i am. Spreading out through night, laughter, and promise and dark hate, warming but whatever i touch that is living, consuming, only what is already dead. Thank you so much. And next youll hear from the incomparable tracy. Smith. Its one thing to live with love and gratitude to lorde and its another to hear her words embodied tonight and feel how much we need them. A a nice, as a people. Itsen urgency, i feel, so its a real gift to be here tonight and be able to share. I thought i live a i wanted to begin with just thinking about the brilliant way that lordes work upon her experiences of cancer and mastectomy, also it shed light on a private experience that many of us must encounter and operate creates a powerful vocabulary for resistance in other contexts. I want to think about the honesty with which lorde tracks the pain, fear, anger, and insight of the experience of cancer, and i want to think about the ways her mind and spirit refuse to let any of that battle go to waste. Its an example of consummate resourcefulness. On one level, what she offers in the is says and journal entries making up this at the cancer journals is a discourse on the politics of cancer which she describes as a profitproducing industry which has sidestepped questions of arresting causality and instead created a market for things like prosthetics and Reconstructive Surgery products which lorde argues reinforce the dangerous notion that female bodies must be pretty and pal hardable to others, describing her own postonner and post op experiences he writes of the one of the at the tom Breast Cancer surges in new york city every woman there either had breast removed, might have to have a breast rae moved or was afraid of having to have a breast removed, and every woman there could have used a reminder that having one breast did not mean her life was over, nor that she was less a woman, nor that she was condemned to the use of a placebo in order to feel good about herself and the way she looked. Yet, a woman who has one breath and refused to hide that fact refuses to hide that fact behind a pa the tech lambs wool which has no relationship or likeness to her open breath, woman who is attempt offing come to terms with her changed landscape and changed timetable of life, and with her own body, and pain, and beauty, and strength, that woman is seen as a threat to the, quote, morale of a breast surgeons office. The karat which with lord k called out this contradiction has bearing upon our attitudes towards mastectomies, female body image and autonomy, and all this time later it also urges me to consider another malignancy roiling American Society which is that of racism, which r. Its own forms of censure and social sanction against those who refuse to be cowed into silence and assimilation. And this context i take lordes testimony of her experience as a road map, not just to enduring or with standing oppression but bare its workings for others to see and knowledge, for resistance forks lord reresince draws on be deep private resources of the self and maintaining a commitment to the collective, thats communal, its general ative, its corrective. In her words commitment, quote, means teaching, surviving and fighting with the most important resource i have, myself, and taking joy in that battle. It means for me recognizing the enemy outside and the enemy within. And knowing that my work is part of a continuum of womens work, reclaiming this earth and our power, and knowing that this work did not begin with my birth, nor will it end with my death. It and means knowing that in this continuum my life and my love and my work has particular power and meaning relative to others. I witness evidence of a similar in the Current Movement around black life in america and the importance of black stories, black creativity, black selfcare, and black community. As things we must overcome barriers, both internal and external, to claim. I witnessed this commitment at a surge of power and consciousness, both coinciding with and arising from the equal surge in violence and intolerance against blackness and black calls for justice. So i guess what im intending to emphasize is, the vulnerabilities that lorde clayeds as a worm, artist and survivors are not obstacles to work she dispossess many ways make this work possible. Theres a quote from the essay that opens sister outsider i just want to share notes from a trip to russia. It comes into my head because during this literal struggle for her life she is traveling, she is teaching others, teaching white feminists how they might better situate themselves to accept and support black women and she is making a kind of sense out of other peoples experience that might be useful to the conditions of black reality in america that she so concerned with. This is just a little quote from notes on a trip to russia. And that trip was really about looking for every kernel of insight, of possibility, and every tool she might be able to apply to this human struggle she is interested in and invested in. I came away with revolutionary women in my head. But i feel very much now still that we, black americans, exist alone in the mouth of the dragon. As ive auld suspected, outside of rhetoric and proclamations of solidarity theres no help except ourselves. Maybe ill just leave that there and urge you to dive back into this really remarkable prose i feel is critical to getting through the moment we find ourselves in, which is brutal and also i think so full of possibility that i want to claim. This is lordes potential a litany for survival. For those of us who live at the shoreline, standin

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