Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  22 James Baldwin What Tm doing to my son?' And he was about tosay something more, something awful; buthe caught himself and only said, with a resigned, drunken, despairing calm: 'What are youtalking about, Ellen?' Doyou really think/ she asked —I was cer- tain that she was standing inthe center ofthe room, with her hands folded before her, stand- ing very straight and still — *that you're the kind ofman he ought tobe when he grows up?'And, as my father said nothing: *He is growing up, youlaiow.' And then, spitefully, Which is more than I cansay for you.' 'Go to bed, Ellen,' said myfather — sounding very weary. Ihad the feeling, sincethey weretalking about me,that Iought togodownstairs and tellEllen that whatever was wrong between my father andmyself we couldwork out be- tween uswithoutherhelp. And, perhaps — which seems odd — Ifelt thatshewasdisre- spectfulof me. For I hadcertainlyneversaid a word to heraboutmyfather. I heardhisheavy,imevenfootfalls as he moved acrosstheroom,towardsthe stairs. Don't think,'saidEllen,'thatIdon'tknow where you've been.' Tve beenout— drinking — ' saidmy father, •and now I'd like to geta httlesleep.Do you mind?' Tou've beenwiththat girl,Beatrice,' said Ellen. That'swhere youalways are and that's GIOVANNI'S ROOM 23 where all your money goes and all your man- hood and seK-respect, too/ She had succeeded in making him angry. He began to stammer. If you think —if you tfeinfe— that Fm going to stand— stand— stand here — and argue with you about my pri- vate life — my private lifel — if you think I'm going to argue with youabout it, why, you're out of your mind/ T. certainly don't care,* said Ellen, Vhat you do with yourself.It isn't youI'm worried about. It's only that you're the only person who has any audiority over David. Idon't. And he hasn't got any mother. Andhe only listens tome when he thinksit pleases you. Do you really think it'sagood idea for Davidto see you staggering homedrunkallthe time? And don't fool your- self/she added,aftera moment, ina voice thick withpassion,'don't fool yourself that he doesn't knowwhereyou'recoming from,don't thinkhe doesn'tknow about yourwomen!' She was wrong. Idon't think I didknow aboutthem —or I had neverthought about them.But from that evening, Ithought about them allthe time. Icould scarcelyeverface a woman without wondering whether or not my father had, in Ellen's phrase, been 'interfering' withher. 1 think it barely possible/ said my father, *that David has a cleaner mind than yours.' The silence, then, in which my father climbed thestairs was byfar the worstsilence my hfe

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  If this vast product of creative energy were a celebration of death it would be nothing more than a mockery. We know full well that, whatever its defeats or limitations, this great body of creation represents the triumph of life over death. And so I make bold to say that no matter how vile, filthy, scabrous, scatalogical or obscene a book may be, if it serves life, if it aims at the cancer which is eating out the heart of the world, it is a good book, a righteous book, a holy book. To say of it that it is immoral, to call it pornographic or obscene, is like talking of spittle in connection with the hydrogen bomb. There is no book yet written devastating enough to wipe from the consciousness of living man the horrors to which he is now privy, the horrors which he is being asked to accept in advance in return for the privilege of belonging to a civilization which has virtually converted him into an unthinking, unfeeling monster. Monster, robot, slave, accursed one—it makes little difference which term one uses to convey the picture of our dehumanized condition. Never was mankind as a whole in a more ignoble condition than ours. We are all bound to one another in a disgraceful master-slave relationship; we are all caught in the same vicious circle of judge and be judged; we all aim to destroy one another if we cannot have our way. Instead of respect, toleration, kindness and consideration, to say nothing of love, we view one another with fear, suspicion, hatred, envy, rivalry and malevolence. Our world is grounded in falsity. In whatever direction you venture, into whatever sphere of human activity you penetrate, you encounter nothing but sham, fraud, deceit, falsehood. Cognizant of the fact that, no matter how highly placed, men can not, dare not, think freely, independently, I almost despair of making myself heard. And if I speak at all, if I venture to hazard my point of view about matters fundamental, it is because I am convinced that, however black the picture may be, a drastic change is not only possible but inevitable. I feel that it is my right and my duty as a human being to further this change. Without in the least wishing to glorify myself I should like to point out that there is evidence throughout my work that I myself have undergone a change; I say it is evident and obvious that the man who relates the story of his life is not the same as the “hero” who stalks the pages of these autobiographical novels. The man who confesses his sins, his crimes or his misdeeds is never the same as the one who committed them. Is it necessary for me to underline the fact that the author, in exposing his guilt and suffering, his fears and his triumphs, is but announcing his liberation and emancipation?

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  and have entirely different emotional reactions. TIP Finding the nuance in situations or motivations of others so as not to think of them as all bad can help people lessen their anger. Imagine, for instance that these two people are students who fail a test. The person with a depressed worldview might look at that experience and think, “Of course I failed it. I’m not smart enough and the teacher knows it. I’ll probably fail the entire class now.” The angry person, though, might externalize the cause and think, “This teacher doesn’t know anything. I failed because the test was unfair and they didn’t teach me well enough.” Interestingly, they may come to the same conclusion, that they will fail the class, but for very different reasons. The first will fail because they think they don’t have what it takes to be successful. The second will fail because they think the instructor isn’t a good enough teacher. Three Broad, Overlapping Categories of Thoughts When it comes to the automatic thoughts of angry people, there are three broad, overlapping categories that tend to cause or at least exacerbate their anger: high expectations of others, dichotomous thinking, and disaster thinking. High Expectations of Others I recently described the following scenarios on social media and asked people how they would respond if it happened to them: You’re driving along, going over the speed limit in the left lane, passing cars, going to get over as soon as you have a chance. The car behind you

• From How to Deal with Angry People (2023)

  In the end, much of this is rooted in the fact that she finds intense anger especially scary. “I still don’t have a healthy relationship with anger,” she told me. Izzy told me that her dad has softened a little as he has gotten older. It’s hard to tell if this due to the typical pattern of development or if it’s more specific to how their relationship as evolved. As people age, they often tend to relax a little as it becomes more important to experience positive emotions. When Izzy moved away from home, their relationship changed quite a bit. They saw each other less, obviously, and that impacted the way anger played out in their relationship. But, she also thinks that he’s become “more reflective” about his anger as he’s gotten older and this has changed how he emotes. Anger as an Emotion Izzy’s dad nicely illustrates how anger can be two things. An often sweet and loving person, he would get angry and “lose control emotionally,” as she described it. Like a lot of people when they are angry, he would lash out in these circumstances. As I said earlier, the angry experience is associated with a particular set of thoughts, physiological experiences, and behaviors. When we get mad, for example, our thoughts often shift to those of blaming, judgement, and revenge. How dare they, they should not have done that , or even I’ll get back at them for this are all things we might think when we get angry. Similarly, we often lash out physically or verbally when we get angry. Those thoughts of revenge we might experience can lead to vengeful actions. Like with Izzy’s dad, people will yell or say hurtful things. They will push, hit, or find other ways to aggress against the people they believed wronged them. Even when they don’t actually behave aggressively, they may want to. Psychologists call these action tendencies – when we want to carry out a particular behavior as part of our emotional response, but, because we are human and have the capacity for impulse control, we can stop ourselves and direct our anger differently. Finally, our anger brings with it a particular set of physiological responses. When we get angry, our fight-or-flight response kicks in to help prepare us to respond to the injustice or work through the blocked goals. Our heart rate increases, we start to breath more heavily, our muscles tense up, and our digestive system slows down. This fascinating and complex set of responses is rooted in our evolutionary history. Such responses offered our ancestors, human and nonhuman, a survival benefit.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  Since before that. Since the days of the Archangel Michael. In the not too distant past there was one who was given the cup of hemlock for being “the corruptor of youth.” Today he is regarded as one of the sanest, most lucid minds that ever was. We who are always being arraigned before the bar can do no better than to resort to the celebrated Socratic method. Our only answer is to return the question. There are so many questions one could put to the Court, to any court. But would one get a response? Can the Court of the Land ever be put in question? I am afraid not. The judicial body is a sacrosanct body. This is unfortunate, as I see it, for when issues of grave import arise the last court of reference, in my opinion, should be the public. When justice is at stake responsibility cannot be shifted to an elect few without injustice resulting. No court could function if it did not follow the steel rails of precedent, taboo and prejudice. I come back to the lengthy document representing the decision of the Oslo Town Court, to the tabulation of all the infractions of the moral code therein listed. There is something frightening as well as disheartening about such an indictment. It has a medieval aspect. And it has nothing to do with justice. Law itself is made to look ridiculous. Once again let me say that it is not the courts of Oslo or the laws and codes of Norway which I inveigh against; everywhere in the civilized world there is this mummery and flummery manifesting as the Voice of Inertia. The offender who stands before the Court is not being tried by his peers but by his dead ancestors. The moral codes, operative only if they are in conformance with natural or divine laws, are not safeguarded by these flimsy dikes; on the contrary, they are exposed as weak and ineffectual barriers. Finally, here is the crux of the matter. Will an adverse decision by this court or any other court effectively hinder the further circulation of this book? The history of similar cases does not substantiate such an eventuality. If anything, an unfavorable verdict will only add more fuel to the flames. Proscription only leads to resistance; the fight goes on underground, becomes more insidious therefore, more difficult to cope with. If only one man in Norway reads the book and believes with the author that one has the right to express himself freely, the battle is won.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I am a lesbian woman of Color whose children eat regularly because I work in a university. If their full bellies make me fail to recognize my commonality with a woman of Color whose children do not eat because she cannot find work, or who has no children because her insides are rotted from home abortions and sterilization; if I fail to recognize the lesbian who chooses not to have children, the woman who remains closeted because her homophobic community is her only life support, the woman who chooses silence instead of another death, the woman who is terrified lest my anger trigger the explosion of hers; if I fail to recognize them as other faces of myself, then I am contributing not only to each of their oppressions but also to my own, and the anger which stands between us then must be used for clarity and mutual empowerment, not for evasion by guilt or for further separation. I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you. I speak here as a woman of Color who is not bent upon destruction, but upon survival. No woman is responsible for altering the psyche of her oppressor, even when that psyche is embodied in another woman. I have suckled the wolf’s lip of anger and I have used it for illumination, laughter, protection, fire in places where there was no light, no food, no sisters, no quarter. We are not goddesses or matriarchs or edifices of divine forgiveness; we are not fiery fingers of judgment or instruments of flagellation; we are women forced back always upon our woman’s power. We have learned to use anger as we have learned to use the dead flesh of animals, and bruised, battered, and changing, we have survived and grown and, in Angela Wilson’s words, we are moving on. With or without uncolored women. We use whatever strengths we have fought for, including anger, to help define and fashion a world where all our sisters can grow, where our children can love, and where the power of touching and meeting another woman’s difference and wonder will eventually transcend the need for destruction.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  This is much the same as how the “creative relationships” between master and slave were always those benefiting the master. The results of woman-hating in the Black community are tragedies which diminish all Black people. These acts must be seen in the context of a systematic devaluation of Black women within this society. It is within this context that we become approved and acceptable targets for Black male rage, so acceptable that even a Black male social scientist condones and excuses this depersonalizing abuse. This abuse is no longer acceptable to Black women in the name of solidarity, nor of Black liberation. Any dialogue between Black women and Black men must begin there, no matter where it ends. * “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy” by Robert Staples in The Black Scholar, vol. 1, no. 3–4 (January–February 1970). † From We Will Make A River, poems by Mary McAnnally (West End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979), p. 27. The Uses of Anger Women Responding to Racism Racism. The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance, manifest and implied. Women respond to racism. My response to racism is anger. I have lived with that anger, ignoring it, feeding upon it, learning to use it before it laid my visions to waste, for most of my life. Once I did it in silence, afraid of the weight. My fear of anger taught me nothing. Your fear of that anger will teach you nothing, also. Women responding to racism means women responding to anger; the anger of exclusion, of unquestioned privilege, of racial distortions, of silence, ill-use, stereotyping, defensiveness, misnaming, betrayal, and cooptation. My anger is a response to racist attitudes and to the actions and presumptions that arise out of those attitudes. If your dealings with other women reflect those attitudes, then my anger and your attendant fears are spotlights that can be used for growth in the same way I have used learning to express anger for my growth. But for corrective surgery, not guilt. Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures. Because I do not want this to become a theoretical discussion, I am going to give a few examples of interchanges between women that illustrate these points. In the interest of time, I am going to cut them short. I want you to know there were many more. For example: •I speak out of direct and particular anger at an academic conference, and a white woman says, “Tell me how you feel but don’t say it too harshly or I cannot hear you.” But is it my manner that keeps her from hearing, or the threat of a message that her life may change? •The Women’s Studies Program of a southern university invites a Black woman to read following a week-long forum on Black and white women. “What has this week given to you?” I ask.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  My father was in the hospice phase of his battle with stage IV pancreatic cancer. His final wish was to die at home, which my mom and I, with steadfast support from my husband, Brian, had worked to honor, arranging for hospice nurses, medical equipment and support, and meal trains. Surrounded by family and his beloved dogs, Jack and Ella, his final days were full of life-on-pause moments like this one, deeply serene and sacred. Until the jackhammers kicked in. Literally. When I ripped open the curtains, I saw an entire wrecking crew tearing up a concrete pool in my parents’ neighbor’s backyard. Are you fucking kidding me? As far as I was concerned, Dad could go any minute now. His nurses had basically said as much, alerting us to “expect the unexpected,” which is something we were already growing used to. His once-flush complexion was now a constant state of pale. His previously athletic body had withered down to nearly half his regular body weight. Seemingly overnight, he’d started retaining fluid in his abdomen, something the lean golfer in him would have hated in “normal” times. For the physical changes alone, death by cancer can be a mindfuck. Patients can go from “bad” to “actively dying” in the blink of an eye. Whatever happened, I was not about to let him leave this planet listening to the earsplitting sounds of a piston hitting a striker plate up to 1,800 times per minute. If you’ve ever watched as a loved one gets ready to leave this world, you can understand the ferocious mama bear instincts that instantly took over me. Dad does not need construction right now. He needs Enya! (Or maybe I needed Enya.) His pain had risen to levels that required round-the-clock morphine. Though I couldn’t experience his physical agony firsthand, his pain sure felt like my pain every time I heard him groan. In the coming days, he would no longer be able to communicate with us. His language would go from a few words to hand squeezes to nothing. Step-by-step, he walked closer to his transition. I watched helplessly as Dad straddled an unfamiliar divide between holding on and completely letting go of control. For me, being in control has always been like wrapping myself in a warm, safe woobie. I dress-rehearse worstcase scenarios all the time, just to make sure that I’m never caught off guard. Yeah, I’m that person. But you know what totally ambushed me as Dad’s days started to dwindle? How there was absolutely nothing I could do to protect him. No amount of wishful thinking (If I never drop f-bombs again, maybe Dad will suddenly get better) or desperate prayer (Dude, can we work with the timeline here?) would help me stop his organs from slowly shutting down, right before my eyes. What I could control, though, was putting an immediate stop to the thunderous mechanical appliances shaking our house and messing up our hospice zen.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I have heard it said—usually behind my back—that Black Lesbians are not normal. But what is normal in this deranged society by which we are all trapped? I remember, and so do many of you, when being Black was considered not normal, when they talked about us in whispers, tried to paint us, lynch us, bleach us, ignore us, pretend we did not exist. We called that racism. I have heard it said that Black Lesbians are a threat to the Black family. But when 50 percent of children born to Black women are born out of wedlock, and 30 percent of all Black families are headed by women without husbands, we need to broaden and redefine what we mean by family. I have heard it said that Black Lesbians will mean the death of the race. Yet Black Lesbians bear children in exactly the same way other women bear children, and a Lesbian household is simply another kind of family. Ask my son and daughter. The terror of Black Lesbians is buried in that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference—to kill it or ignore it. Be assured: loving women is not a communicable disease. You don’t catch it like the common cold. Yet the one accusation that seems to render even the most vocal straight Black woman totally silent and ineffective is the suggestion that she might be a Black Lesbian. If someone says you’re Russian and you know you’re not, you don’t collapse into stunned silence. Even if someone calls you a bigamist, or a childbeater, and you know you’re not, you don’t crumple into bits. You say it’s not true and keep on printing the posters. But let anyone, particularly a Black man, accuse a straight Black woman of being a Black Lesbian, and right away that sister becomes immobilized, as if that is the most horrible thing she could be, and must at all costs be proven false. That is homophobia. It is a waste of woman energy, and it puts a terrible weapon into the hands of your enemies to be used against you to silence you, to keep you docile and in line. It also serves to keep us isolated and apart.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  In a world of possibility for us all, our personal visions help lay the groundwork for political action. The failure of academic feminists to recognize difference as a crucial strength is a failure to reach beyond the first patriarchal lesson. In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower. Why weren’t other women of Color found to participate in this conference? Why were two phone calls to me considered a consultation? Am I the only possible source of names of Black feminists? And although the Black panelist’s paper ends on an important and powerful connection of love between women, what about interracial cooperation between feminists who don’t love each other? In academic feminist circles, the answer to these questions is often, “We did not know who to ask.” But that is the same evasion of responsibility, the same cop-out, that keeps Black women’s art out of women’s exhibitions, Black women’s work out of most feminist publications except for the occasional “Special Third World Women’s Issue,” and Black women’s texts off your reading lists. But as Adrienne Rich pointed out in a recent talk, white feminists have educated themselves about such an enormous amount over the past ten years, how come you haven’t also educated yourselves about Black women and the differences between us—white and Black—when it is key to our survival as a movement? Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance and to educate men as to our existence and our needs. This is an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns. Now we hear that it is the task of women of Color to educate white women—in the face of tremendous resistance—as to our existence, our differences, our relative roles in our joint survival. This is a diversion of energies and a tragic repetition of racist patriarchal thought. Simone de Beauvoir once said: “It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for acting.” Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives there. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices. Sexism An American Disease in Blackface Black feminism is not white feminism in blackface. Black women have particular and legitimate issues which affect our lives as Black women, and addressing those issues does not make us any less Black. To attempt to open dialogue between Black women and Black men by attacking Black feminists seems shortsighted and self-defeating. Yet this is what Robert Staples, Black sociologist, has done in The Black Scholar.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I would never presume to speak about Black men the way I have heard some of my straight sisters talk about the men they are attached to. And of course that concerns me, because it reflects a situation of noncommunication in the heterosexual Black community that is far more truly threatening than the existence of Black Lesbians. What does this have to do with Black women organizing? I have heard it said—usually behind my back—that Black Lesbians are not normal. But what is normal in this deranged society by which we are all trapped? I remember, and so do many of you, when being Black was considered not normal, when they talked about us in whispers, tried to paint us, lynch us, bleach us, ignore us, pretend we did not exist. We called that racism. I have heard it said that Black Lesbians are a threat to the Black family. But when 50 percent of children born to Black women are born out of wedlock, and 30 percent of all Black families are headed by women without husbands, we need to broaden and redefine what we mean by family. I have heard it said that Black Lesbians will mean the death of the race. Yet Black Lesbians bear children in exactly the same way other women bear children, and a Lesbian household is simply another kind of family. Ask my son and daughter. The terror of Black Lesbians is buried in that deep inner place where we have been taught to fear all difference—to kill it or ignore it. Be assured: loving women is not a communicable disease. You don’t catch it like the common cold. Yet the one accusation that seems to render even the most vocal straight Black woman totally silent and ineffective is the suggestion that she might be a Black Lesbian. If someone says you’re Russian and you know you’re not, you don’t collapse into stunned silence. Even if someone calls you a bigamist, or a childbeater, and you know you’re not, you don’t crumple into bits. You say it’s not true and keep on printing the posters. But let anyone, particularly a Black man, accuse a straight Black woman of being a Black Lesbian, and right away that sister becomes immobilized, as if that is the most horrible thing she could be, and must at all costs be proven false. That is homophobia. It is a waste of woman energy, and it puts a terrible weapon into the hands of your enemies to be used against you to silence you, to keep you docile and in line. It also serves to keep us isolated and apart. I have heard it said that Black Lesbians are not political, that we have not been and are not involved in the struggles of Black people.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  The lack of a reasonable and articulate Black male viewpoint on these questions is not the responsibility of Black women. We have too often been expected to be all things to all people and speak everyone else’s position but our very own. Black men are not so passive that they must have Black women speak for them. Even my fourteen-year-old son knows that. Black men themselves must examine and articulate their own desires and positions and stand by the conclusions thereof. No point is served by a Black male professional who merely whines at the absence of his viewpoint in Black women’s work. Oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves. For Staples to suggest, for instance, that Black men leave their families as a form of male protest against female decision making in the home is in direct contradiction to his own observations in “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy.” * Now I am sure there are still some Black men who marry white women because they feel a white woman can better fit the model of “femininity” set forth in this country. But for Staples to justify that act using the reason it occurs, and take Black women to task for it, is not only another error in reasoning; it is like justifying the actions of a lemming who follows its companions over the cliff to sure death. Because it happens does not mean it should happen, nor that it is functional for the well-being of the individual nor the group. It is not the destiny of Black america to repeat white america’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. If Black men continue to define “femininity” instead of their own desires, and to do it in archaic european terms, they restrict our access to each other’s energies. Freedom and future for Blacks does not mean absorbing the dominant white male disease of sexism. As Black women and men, we cannot hope to begin dialogue by denying the oppressive nature of male privilege. And if Black males choose to assume that privilege for whatever reason—raping, brutalizing, and killing Black women—then ignoring these acts of Black male oppression within our communities can only serve our destroyers. One oppression does not justify another. It has been said that Black men cannot be denied their personal choice of the woman who meets their need to dominate. In that case, Black women also cannot be denied our personal choices, and those choices are becomingly increasingly self-assertive and female-oriented. As a people, we most certainly must work together.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  This time is my turn. I bend to the knife my ears blood-drumming across the street my lover’s voice the only moving sound within white heat “Don’t touch it!” I straighten, weaken, then start down again hungry for resolution simple as anger and so close at hand my fingers reach for the familiar blade the known grip of wood against my palm I have held it to the whetstone a thousand nights for this escorting fury through my sleep like a cherished friend to wake in the stink of rage beside the sleep-white face of love The keen steel of a dreamt knife sparks honed from the whetted edge with a tortured shriek between my lover’s voice and the grey spinning a choice of pain or fury slashing across judgment like a crimson scar I could open her up to my anger with a point sharpened upon love. In the deathland my lover’s voice fades like the roar of a train derailed on the other side of a river every white woman’s face I love and distrust is upon it eating green grapes from a paper bag marking yellow exam-books tucked into a manilla folder orderly as the last thought before death I throw the switch. Through screams of crumpled steel I search the wreckage for a ticket of hatred my lover’s voice calling a knife at her throat. In this steaming aisle of the dead I am weeping to learn the names of those streets my feet have worn thin with running and why they will never serve me nor ever lead me home. “Don’t touch it!” she cries I straighten myself in confusion a drunken woman is running away down the Westside street my lover’s voice moves me to a shadowy clearing. Corralled in fantasy the woman with white eyes has vanished to become her own nightmare a french butcher blade hangs in my house love’s token I remember this knife it carved its message into my sleeping she only read its warning written upon my face. [1981] from Our Dead Behind Us (1986) to Gloria I. Joseph tikoro nnko agyina * * Ashanti proverb: “One head cannot go into counsel” To the Poet Who Happens to Be Black and the Black Poet Who Happens to Be a Woman I I was born in the gut of Blackness from between my mother’s particular thighs her waters broke upon blue-flowered lineoleum and turned to slush in the Harlem cold 10 PM on a full moon’s night my head crested round as a clock “You were so dark,” my mother said “I thought you were a boy.”

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  Utterly lost, drifting from relationship to relationship, or remaining stuck in unhappy marriages of their own, they settle for crumbs in love and life. FOURTEEN Sex and Drugs I n Larry’s and Carol’s stories I talked a bit about drug and alcohol abuse during adolescence and the astonishing rise in sexual promiscuity among many of the young girls from both chaotic intact and chaotic postdivorce families. But we still have not delved into the heart of these destructive behaviors and what the child gains from them psychologically. Paula shows us the inner logic of running out of control. The next time I saw Paula she was fifteen and looked about twenty-five. She was thin, very attractive, and very, very precocious. Her green eyes, lined with heavy black eyeliner, were bloodshot, whether from her incessant smoking or from some other drug I could not tell. With her black, short, sleeveless dress artfully falling from one shoulder and her legs encased in high red leather boots, she was the picture of what her exasperated mother had warned me of a week earlier: “Don’t be surprised, Judy. She looks like a slut.” With bravado, constantly tossing her long, curly hair into and then out of her eyes, she told me of her numerous boyfriends and of her adventures partying and evading the police and the school authorities. She boasted about being high every day and of the huge quantities of alcohol that she and her friends drank. In describing a confused mixture of sexual exploits and physical fights, she told me, “I give as good as I get.” She looked very tough and seemed utterly lost. I remember being saddened and very troubled by Paula at this time, but I wasn’t surprised. Her mother told me that the trouble started the summer after sixth grade when Paula turned twelve. In the next two years, Paula accumulated a police record for possession of drugs, disrupting the peace, and drinking in public. She had been suspended from school several times for possession of marijuana and for stealing from and harassing other students. She was on her final probation. One day, Paula’s mother unexpectedly came home early from work to find her thirteen-year-old daughter in bed with two seventeen-year-old boys. Screaming, pleading, grounding, and taking away privileges had no effect. Paula stomped out as soon as her mother left for work and returned when she felt like it. At age fifteen, she took her sister’s car and totaled it. Paula was on a tear and out of control. Paula hit adolescence filled with anger about having been abandoned as a little girl.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Straight-backed and indignant, one by one, my family and I got down from the counter stools and turned around and marched out of the store, quiet and outraged, as if we had never been Black before. No one would answer my emphatic questions with anything other than a guilty silence. “But we hadn’t done anything!” This wasn’t right or fair! Hadn’t I written poems about Bataan and freedom and democracy for all? My parents wouldn’t speak of this injustice, not because they had contributed to it, but because they felt they should have anticipated it and avoided it. This made me even angrier. My fury was not going to be acknowledged by a like fury. Even my two sisters copied my parents’ pretense that nothing unusual and anti-american had occurred. I was left to write my angry letter to the president of the united states all by myself, although my father did promise I could type it out on the office typewriter next week, after I showed it to him in my copybook diary. The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington, D.C. that summer I left childhood was white, and the white heat and the white pavement and the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip and it wasn’t much of a graduation present after all. I Am Your Sister Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities Whenever I come to Medgar Evers College I always feel a thrill of anticipation and delight because it feels like coming home, like talking to family, having a chance to speak about things that are very important to me with people who matter the most. And this is particularly true whenever I talk at the Women’s Center. But, as with all families, we sometimes find it difficult to deal constructively with the genuine differences between us and to recognize that unity does not require that we be identical to each other. Black women are not one great vat of homogenized chocolate milk. We have many different faces, and we do not have to become each other in order to work together. It is not easy for me to speak here with you as a Black Lesbian feminist, recognizing that some of the ways in which I identify myself make it difficult for you to hear me. But meeting across difference always requires mutual stretching, and until you can hear me as a Black Lesbian feminist, our strengths will not be truly available to each other as Black women.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  If the problems of Black women are only derivatives of a larger contradiction between capital and labor, then so is racism, and both must be fought by all of us. The capitalist structure is a many-headed monster. I might add here that in no socialist country that I have visited have I found an absence of racism or of sexism, so the eradication of both of these diseases seems to involve more than the abolition of capitalism as an institution. No reasonable Black man can possibly condone the rape and slaughter of Black women by Black men as a fitting response to capitalist oppression. And destruction of Black women by Black men clearly cuts across all class lines. Whatever the “structural underpinnings” (Staples) for sexism in the Black community may be, it is obviously Black women who are bearing the brunt of that sexism, and so it is in our best interest to abolish it. We invite our Black brothers to join us, since ultimately that abolition is in their best interests also. For Black men are also diminished by a sexism which robs them of meaningful connections to Black women and our struggles. Since it is Black women who are being abused, however, and since it is our female blood that is being shed, it is for Black women to decide whether or not sexism in the Black community is pathological. And we do not approach that discussion theoretically. Those “creative relationships” which Staples speaks about within the Black community are almost invariably those which operate to the benefit of Black males, given the Black male/female ratio and the implied power balance within a supply and demand situation. Polygamy is seen as “creative,” but a lesbian relationship is not. This is much the same as how the “creative relationships” between master and slave were always those benefiting the master. The results of woman-hating in the Black community are tragedies which diminish all Black people. These acts must be seen in the context of a systematic devaluation of Black women within this society. It is within this context that we become approved and acceptable targets for Black male rage, so acceptable that even a Black male social scientist condones and excuses this depersonalizing abuse. This abuse is no longer acceptable to Black women in the name of solidarity, nor of Black liberation. Any dialogue between Black women and Black men must begin there, no matter where it ends. * “The Myth of the Black Matriarchy” by Robert Staples in The Black Scholar, vol. 1, no. 3–4 (January–February 1970).† From We Will Make A River, poems by Mary McAnnally (West End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1979), p. 27.The Uses of Anger Women Responding to Racism Racism. The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance, manifest and implied.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Someone else is very sick next door, and the vibes are almost too painful to bear. But I must stop saying that now so glibly. Someday something will, in fact, be too painful to bear and then I will have to act. Does one simply get tired of living? I can’t imagine right now what that would be like, but that is because I feel filled with a fury to live—because I believe life can be good even when it is painful—a fury that my energies just don’t match my desires anymore. December 25, 1985 Arlesheim Good morning, Christmas. A Swiss bubble is keeping me from talking to my children and the women I love. The front desk won’t put my calls through. Nobody here wants to pierce this fragile, delicate bubble that is the best of all possible worlds, they believe. So frighteningly insular. Don’t they know good things get better by opening them up to others, giving and taking and changing? Most people here seem to feel that rigidity is a bona fide pathway to peace, and every fiber of me rebels against that. December 26, 1985 Arlesheim Adrienne [Rich] and Michelle [Cliff] and Gloria [Joseph] just called from California. I feel so physically cut off from the people I love. I need them, the sharing of grief and energy. I am avoiding plunging directly into the nightmare of liver cancer as a fact of my life by edging into it like an icy bath. I am trying to edge my friends into it, too, without having to deal with more of their fury and grief than I can handle. There is some we share, and that mutual support makes us closer and more resolved. But there is some that they will have to deal with on their own, just as there is some fury and grief that I can only meet in a private place. Frances has been so true and staunch here. It is more difficult for her sometimes because she does not have the fount of desperate determination that survival is generating inside me. There is so much to keep track of. I think it’s crucial that I not only suffer this but record, in the fullness and the lean, some of the raw as well as digested qualities of now. Last night there was a Christmas full moon, and it felt like a hopeful sign. I stood out in the road in front of the hospital under the full moon on Christmas night and thought about all of my beloved people, the women I love, my children, my family, all the dear faces before my eyes. The moon was so clear and bright, I could feel her upon my skin through Helen’s fur coat. After I had gone to bed she called me back to her twice. The first time I could not pierce through the veil of sleep, but I saw her light and heard her in my dreams.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  216 James Baldwin gottenit yet/ she added, In spite ofyou.I'm not going to forget it. Fm gettingout ofthis house, away from you, justas fastas taxis, trains, and boats will carry me/ Andin the room which hadbeen ourbed- room in the beginning of our lifeinthishouse, she movedwith the desperate hasteofsomeone about to flee— from the open suitcaseon the bed, to thechest of drawers,tothecloset. I stood in thedoorway, watching her. I stood there theway a small boy whohas wethis pants stands beforehis teacher.Allthe words Iwanted to say closed mythroat, likeweeds,and stopped my mouth. 1 wish,anyway/ 1 saidatlast,'that you'd be- lieve mewhen Isay that, ifIwas lying, Iwasn't lying to you* She turned toward me with aterrible face. 7 was the one youwere talking to. Iwasthe one youwanted tocomewith you tothis terrible houseinthe middle ofnowhere. I was the one yousaid you wanted to marry T 1 mean/ I said, 1waslying to myself/ 'Oh/said Hella, 1see. That makes every- thingdifferent, of course.' 1 only mean tosay,' Ishouted, 'that whatever I've done tohurt you, I didn't mean to doT T)on'tshout/said Hella. TU soon be gone. Thenyoucanshout it to those hills outthere, shout it to the peasants, how guilty youare, how you loveto beguilty 1' Shestarted moving back and forth again, GIOVANNI'S ROOM 217 moreslowly,from the suitcasetothe chest of drawers. Her hair was damp andfell over her forehead, andherfacewas damp. I longed to reachoutandtakeherinmy arms andcomfort her.Butthatwouldnotbe comfortanymore, only torture, forboth of us. Shedid not lookatme asshe moved, but kept lookingattheclothes shewas packing, as thoughshe were notsure theywerehers. 'But I knew' she said, 1 knew. This is what makesme so ashamed. I knew iteverytime you lookedatme. I knew it everytime wewentto bed.Ifonly you hadtold me the truth then. Don'tyousee how unjust it was to wait for me to find it out? To put all the burden on me? I hadtheright to expectto hearfrom you— womenare always waitingforthe man tospeak. Or hadn't youheard?' I saidnothing. 1 wouldn't havehad to spendallthistime in this house; I wouldn't be wonderinghowin the nameofGodI'm going to standthat longtrip back. I'dbe home by now, dancing with some man who wantedto make me.And I'd let him makeme, too,why not?' Andshesmiled be- wilderedly at a crowdof nylon stockingsin her hand and carefullycrushed themin the suitcase. 'PerhapsIdidn't know it then.I onlyknew I had to get out of Giovanni's room.' 'Well,' she said, *you'reout. Andnow I'm gettingout. It's onlypoor Giovanniwho's — lost his head.'

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  And then I decided to contact one of my professors who had liked my work, to see if he had any ideas. That was real tough for me because I never expect anyone to come through for me. He asked me lots of questions about how I had been able to go to school during the day and work all night and why it had taken me six years instead of the usual four. Bottom line, he said he liked my work, said I had talent and grit, and recommended me to another former student who was starting a new company. The rest is history.” “That’s a very nice story. And it’s a tribute to you.” Larry looked at me soberly and said, “That’s the only time in my life that I’ve gotten help from a man. ” “I take it your dad didn’t help with your education?” He hooted. “Not a cent. The only good thing is that I didn’t expect any help. My dad is a taker, not a giver. He’s never thought of anyone in his life except himself. He’s a smart man. He can be a charmer when he puts himself out. He has a good sense of humor. But he has never made sacrifices for anyone. He’s selfish through and through. I used to think he was a hero, a great man. I even thought that he loved me. He kept telling me, ‘You’re my favorite.’ If that’s true, hell must have a special place for those who are their father’s favorite child.” I was taken aback by Larry’s bitterness. “What’s your relationship now? Do you ever see your dad?” “I see him rarely. Once or twice a year. We talk on the telephone. We chat about work. About the weather. We tell each other dirty jokes. But that’s the extent of it. We don’t communicate on a deeper level.” “Do you miss not having a closer relationship?” “I don’t really care to be close to him now,” Larry said evenly. Then, more gently, he added, “Sometimes I feel bad. Like I heard recently that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and I’m sorry. But the truth is that my sister and I can’t be there for him. We’re still angry at him, even after all this time.” I wondered whether Larry’s father was aware of these feelings. “Tell me, did you ever try to tell him how hurt you were feeling or to talk about having a different kind of relationship?” Larry looked away and then stared down at his hands, inspecting his fingernails. “I did try. I tried to tell him about the issues between us that hurt me.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Now I am sure there are still some Black men who marry white women because they feel a white woman can better fit the model of “femininity” set forth in this country. But for Staples to justify that act using the reason it occurs, and take Black women to task for it, is not only another error in reasoning; it is like justifying the actions of a lemming who follows its companions over the cliff to sure death. Because it happens does not mean it should happen, nor that it is functional for the well-being of the individual nor the group. It is not the destiny of Black america to repeat white america’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life. If Black men continue to define “femininity” instead of their own desires, and to do it in archaic european terms, they restrict our access to each other’s energies. Freedom and future for Blacks does not mean absorbing the dominant white male disease of sexism. As Black women and men, we cannot hope to begin dialogue by denying the oppressive nature of male privilege. And if Black males choose to assume that privilege for whatever reason—raping, brutalizing, and killing Black women—then ignoring these acts of Black male oppression within our communities can only serve our destroyers. One oppression does not justify another. It has been said that Black men cannot be denied their personal choice of the woman who meets their need to dominate. In that case, Black women also cannot be denied our personal choices, and those choices are becomingly increasingly self-assertive and female-oriented. As a people, we most certainly must work together. It would be shortsighted to believe that Black men alone are to blame for the above situations in a society dominated by white male privilege. But the Black male consciousness must be raised to the realization that sexism and woman-hating are critically dysfunctional to his liberation as a Black man because they arise out of the same constellation that engenders racism and homophobia. Until that consciousness is developed, Black men will view sexism and the destruction of Black women as tangential to Black liberation rather than as central to that struggle. So long as this occurs, we will never be able to embark upon that dialogue between Black women and Black men that is so essential to our survival as a people. This continued blindness between us can only serve the oppressive system within which we live. Men avoid women’s observations by accusing us of being too “visceral.” But no amount of understanding the roots of Black woman-hating will bring back Patricia Cowan, nor mute her family’s loss. Pain is very visceral, particularly to the people who are hurting. As the poet Mary McAnally said, “Pain teaches us to take our fingers OUT the fucking fire.”*