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 Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Jeremiah 43 In Egypt Jeremiah Warns of Judgment 1 N OW IT happened when Jeremiah, whom the LORD their God had sent, had finished telling all the people all the words of the LORD their God—that is, all these words— 2 Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the proud and insolent men said to Jeremiah, “You are not telling the truth! The LORD our God has not sent you to say, ‘Do not go into Egypt to live there.’ 3 “But Baruch the son of Neriah is inciting you against us to hand us over to the Chaldeans, so they may [either] put us to death or exile us to Babylon.” 4 So Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces and all the people disobeyed the voice of the LORD [which told them] to stay in the land of Judah. 5 But Johanan the son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces took all the remnant of Judah who had returned to live in the land of Judah from all the nations to which they had been driven— 6 the men, women, and children, the king’s daughters (ladies of the court), and every person whom Nebuzaradan the captain of the bodyguard had left with Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan; he also took Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch the son of Neriah. 7 So they entered the land of Egypt (for they did not obey the voice of the LORD ) and they went in as far as a Tahpanhes. 8 Then came the word of the LORD to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying, 9 “Take some large stones in your hands and hide them in the mortar in the brickwork [of the terrace] which is at the entrance of Pharaoh’s b house in Tahpanhes, in the sight of some of the men of Judah; 10 and say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, “Behold, I am going to send and get c Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, My servant, and I am going to set his throne over these stones that I have hidden; and his [majestic, royal] canopy will be spread over them. [Ezek 29:19 , 20 ] 11 “He will also come and d strike the land of Egypt, giving those who are [destined] for death, to death, and those who are [destined] for captivity, to captivity, and those who are [destined] for the sword, to the sword. 12 “And [through him] I will set fire to the temples of the gods of Egypt, and he will burn them and take them (Egyptian idols) captive. He will wrap himself with the land of Egypt as a shepherd wraps himself with his garment, and he will go away from there safely.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In line with Edwards’s observations, Hedgeman’s memoir resists both the historical and historiographical attempt of Black men, literally and figuratively, to write Black women out of the story and make them merely ornamental on stage; it exposes the power-laden gender relationships that informed the most symbolic of all Black marches; and it demonstrates the ways in which women attending the March were attuned in the immediate moment to the gendered hierarchy they witnessed. Hedgeman presciently connected Black women’s marginalization within the March to the burgeoning white feminist movement, a connection that would not resound fully for Black women until later in the decade. Therefore, her race leadership memoir is an important site in Black women’s intellectual geography because it contests and makes quite plain the fictive, yet violent, nature of accounts of Black leadership built upon recourse to the most charismatic, well-known Black leadership figures. That all these things were apparent to Hedgeman, and that she then fought back by telling her own story of Black political belonging, adds yet another dimension to the story of twentieth-century Black political leadership. Though Hedgeman’s book was called Trumpet Sounds, her bugle calls went largely unnoticed. Her book foretold an approaching problem: How would Black men make space for Black women within the bounds of racial leadership? Though Hedgeman tried to intervene, she confronted a deep cultural resistance to even acknowledging Black women’s intellectual capacity and contribution to discussions of movement building. The Negro Woman Intellectual as Problem Ponchitta Pierce’s Ebony article, which appeared just two years after Hedgeman’s book, provides compelling insight into how Black communities thought about intellectual Black women at the height of the Civil Rights era. First, the article is entitled “Problems of the Negro Woman Intellectual,” though it might just as easily have been titled “The Problem of the Negro Woman Intellectual.” In a late-twentieth-century remix to Du Bois, the magazine article essentially asked of Black women intellectuals, “How does it feel to be a problem?” The designation of Black women as intellectuals was so perplexing as to constitute a conceptual anomaly. By way of comparison, a content analysis of the rest of this special issue on women reveals that in the range of articles that profiled women in the arts, politics, and entertainment, this article is the only one in the issue that constructed its titular category and subject matter as “a problem.” Gwendolyn Brooks, interviewed for the article, asserted that though there were many Black women whom we might call “bright or brilliant, productive, effective, intelligent, creative, eminent, discerning, distinguished ... the right to such adjectives [would not] automatically entitle them to the security also of the title, ‘intellectual.’ That is something else.” 17 At face value, her final declaration that “intellectual” was “something else” effectively suggested that an intellectual is something else other than a Black woman—that no matter how many commendable traits a Black woman might possess, being an intellectual was a feat just beyond her reach.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  In his 2008 book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, Vanderbilt University Professor and literary critic Houston Baker offers a scathing assessment of those engaged in Black thought leadership in the forty years since the passing of the Civil Rights era. Interestingly enough, Baker returns to the figure of the “race man/woman” as a Black leadership ideal, reasserting the primacy of both a race-centered analysis and a certain level of racial kinship and loyalty in defining this aggregate group that he terms race people. The problem, to wit, is that the intellectuals who have taken center stage in the post–Civil Rights era fall into two lamentable categories according to Baker: “black centrists and black neoconservatives.”9 Taking on black celebrity public intellectuals, including Princeton professor Cornel West, Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, and Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson, among others, Baker accuses them of the high crime of racial betrayal. More specifically, they have refused or failed (it is unclear which) to carry forth the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, whom Baker characterizes as “not only the most exemplary race man ever born in the United States, but also the greatest black public intellectual leader of the liberation struggle our world has ever known.”10 Although Baker raises a number of important concerns about the ways in which the radical messaging of the contemporary Black intellectual elite has been co-opted by mainstream forces and the seduction of celebrity, his turn back to King should give us pause.

• From Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

  You cannot eliminate an idea by suppressing it, and the idea which is linked with this issue is one of freedom to read what one chooses. Freedom, in other words, to read what is bad for one as well as what is good for one—or, what is simply innocuous. How can one guard against evil, in short, if one does not know what evil is? But it is not something evil, not something poisonous, which this book Sexus offers the Norwegian reader. It is a dose of life which I administered to myself first, and which I not only survived but thrived on. Certainly I would not recommend it to infants, but then neither would I offer a child a bottle of aqua vite . I can say one thing for it unblushingly—compared to the atom bomb, it is full of lifegiving qualities. Henry Miller 1 See his A Challenge to Sex Censors and other works. 2 From the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Philadelphia, November, 1938. 3 More Essays of Love and Virtue . 4 Plexus (version française), Corrêa, Paris, 1952; Plexus (English version), Olympia Press, Paris, 1953. 5 Le Monde du Sexe , Corrêa, Paris, 1952. (Publisher’s Note.) 6 In Remember to Remember , New Directions, and The Intimate Henry Miller , New American Library. (Publisher’s Note.) 7 In Sunday After the War , New Directions, 1944, 1962; and The Intimate Henry Miller , New American Library, 1959. (Publisher’s Note.) ALSO BY HENRY MILLERTHE AIR-CONDITIONED NIGHTMARE ALLER RETOUR NEW YORK BIG SUR AND THE ORANGES OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE THE COLOSSUS OF MAROUSSI THE COSMOLOGICAL EYE A DEVIL IN PARADISE THE DURRELL-MILLER LETTERS FROM YOUR CAPRICORN FRIEND HENRY MILLER ON WRITING INTO THE HEART OF LIFE JUST WILD ABOUT HARRY LETTERS TO EMIL THE NIGHTMARE NOTEBOOK THE SMILE AT THE FOOT OF THE LADDER STAND STILL LIKE THE HUMMINGBIRD THE TIME OF THE ASSASSINS THE WISDOM OF THE HEART Copyright © 1964 by Henry Miller Copyright © 1944, 1957 by Henry Miller Copyright © 1939, 1941, 1957 by New Directions Publishing Corporation All Rights Reserved. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-10675 eISBN 978-0-8112-2137-5 ISBN 978-0-8112-0112-4 First published as ND Paperbook 151 in 1964. The author, editor and publishers are grateful to the following for permission to reprint selections from works by Henry Miller, first published or copyrighted by others, as indicated: Carrefour, Edition du Laurier, and Daphne Fraenkel, for the selection from Hamlet, Third Printing 1962, London. Editions du Chêne, Paris, for selections from Nexus (Copyright © 1959 by Henry Miller): Black Spring, first published by Obelisk Press, Paris, 1936. Copyright © 1958 by Editions du Chêne; and Nexus © 1960 by Editions du Chêne. Grove Press, Inc. and Barney Rosset, New York, for the selections from Black Spring.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  12 Let them give glory to the LORD And declare His praise in the islands and coastlands. 13 The LORD will go forth like a warrior, He will stir up His zeal like a man of war; He will shout out, yes, He will raise a war cry. He will prevail [mightily] against His enemies. The Blindness of the People 14 “I [the LORD ] have been silent for a long time, I have been still and restrained Myself. Now I will moan like a woman in labor, I will both gasp and pant. 15 “I will lay waste the mountains and hills And wither all their vegetation; I will turn the rivers into coastlands And dry up the ponds. 16 “I will lead the blind by a way they do not know; I will guide them in paths that they do not know. I will make darkness into light before them And rugged places into plains. These things I will do [for them], And I will not leave them abandoned or undone.” 17 Those who trust in carved idols will be turned back, And utterly put to shame, Who say to cast images, “You are our gods.” 18 Hear, you deaf! And look, you blind, that you may see. 19 Who is blind but My servant [Israel], Or deaf like My messenger whom I send? Who is blind like the one who is at peace with Me [in a covenant relationship], Or so blind as the servant of the LORD ? 20 You have seen many things, but you do not observe them; Your ears are open, but no one hears. 21 The LORD was pleased for His righteousness’ sake To make the law great and prove to be glorious. 22 But this is a people despoiled and plundered; All of them are trapped in holes, Or are hidden away in prisons. They have become a prey with no one to rescue them, And a spoil, with no one to say, “Give them back!” [Luke 19:41–44 ] 23 Who among you will listen to this? Who will listen and pay attention in the time to come? 24 Who gave up Jacob [the kingdom of Judah] for spoil, and [the kingdom of] Israel to the plunderers? Was it not the LORD , He against whom we [of Judah] have sinned, And in whose ways they [of Israel] were unwilling to walk, And whose law and teaching they did not obey? 25 Therefore He poured out on Israel the heat of His anger And the fierceness of battle; And engulfed him in fire, Yet he did not recognize [the lesson of repentance which the Assyrian conquest was intended to teach]; It burned him, but he did not take it to heart.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I was asked once whether I thought that “Shaddy”, as we called the House-master, had ever had a woman. The idea of “Shaddy” as a virgin filled us with laughter; but when one spoke of him as a lover, it was funnier still. He was a man about forty, tall and fairly strong: he had a degree from some college in Manchester, but to us little snobs he was a bounder because he had not been to either Oxford or Cambridge. He was fairly capable, however. But for some reason or other he had a down on me and I grew to hate him, and was always thinking of how I might hurt him. My new habit of forcing myself to watch and observe everything came to my aid. There were five or six polished oak-steps up to the big bedroom where fourteen of us slept. “Shaddy” used to give us half an hour to get into bed and then would come up, and standing just inside the door under the gas-light would ask us, “Have you all said your prayers?” We all answered: “Yes, sir”, then would come his “Goodnight, boys”, and our stereotyped reply: “Good night, Sir.” He would then turn out the light and go downstairs to his room. The oak-steps outside were worn in the middle and I had noticed that as one goes downstairs one treads on the very edge of each step. One day “Shaddy” had maddened me by giving me one hundred lines of Vergil to learn by heart for some trifling peccadillo. That night, having provided myself with a cake of brown Windsor soap, I ran upstairs before the other boys and rubbed the soap freely on the edge of the two top steps, and then went on to undress. When “Shaddy” put out the light and stepped down to the second step, there was a slip and then a great thud as he half slid, half fell to the bottom. In a moment, for my bed was nearest the door, I had sprung up, opened the door and made incoherent exclamations of sympathy as I helped him to get up. “I’ve hurt my hip”, he said, putting his hand on it. He couldn’t account for his fall. Grinning to myself as I went back, I rubbed the soap off the top step with my handkerchief and got into bed again, where I chuckled over the success of my stratagem. He had only got what he richly deserved, I said to myself. At length the long term wore to its end; the Exam was held and after consulting Stackpole I was very sure of the second prize. “I believe”, he said one day, “that you’d rather have the second prize than the first.” “Indeed I would”, I replied without thinking.

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

  But that doesn’t absolve us when it’s destructive or misdirected. Or when we use it as a decoy to avoid responsibility for what is actually our side of the street. Instead of addressing the underlying reason for the unrest, the focus goes squarely on the shoulders of the anger that was expressed—as if that’s the real problem. While anger can be helpful in certain situations, like motivating us to change things that aren’t working, we don’t want to do what Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and peace activist, calls “training in aggression” or “rehearsing our anger,” which only cements unhelpful patterns of holding on to anger. When left unchecked, anger isolates us, injures our relationships, hurts others, and damages our physical and mental health, making us more prone to chronic inflammation, depression, heart attacks, stroke, and even cancer. Again, anger in and of itself isn’t the problem. It’s how we cope with it that matters. Just as we don’t want to let our resentments drive the bus, we don’t want to suppress or neglect our anger, either. That would be another example of abandoning our own needs. Remember, anger is especially common and appropriate in the face of all kinds of loss, including betrayal, divorce, and death. If you’re feeling it, welcome to the party. The mocktails are on the table in the back. No vodka. Too dangerous. Again, we act out instead of crying out because anger feels powerful, while grief feels powerless. That’s why some of us have an easier time turning to anger instead of grief. In essence, that’s what anger is trying to communicate: “ Ow! This hurts!” Other times, we point our anger in directions that don’t deserve our wrath. Our rational minds understand that we’re not to blame for what happened, and yet we’re angry at ourselves for not doing more. Or we’re angry at the person for not taking better care of themselves. Angry they chose to drive down that street the day of the accident. Angry we didn’t drive instead. Angry at other family members for not showing up. Meanwhile, they’ve got their own traumas and dramas that have nothing to do with us, yet we take their absence personally. Angry at God for not protecting us. If he, she, it can’t keep us safe, how the heck are we supposed to trust life or anyone in it? Simply put, when it comes to anger, there’s often more than meets the eye.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The vise grip in his tensed muscles begins to loosen. (These muscles had been engaged, as Nina Bull demonstrated, to inhibit the original urge to punch.) Bob sighs in relief as his legs begin, gently, to tremble. He “lets in” his wife’s supportive presence and then suddenly recalls, “Oh yeah, that’s what it was. Before I left the office, Alex, the supervisor, and I were discussing a marketing plan for the new widget. Alex and I had strongly differing opinions; we just couldn’t seem to agree. I felt competitive. We were combative, but in a good way. I felt forceful and clear. I suppose we could have hammered it out. Instead we stopped short of a solution when I remembered that Alex was dating the boss’s daughter. I stifled my power and ingenuity, and then, yes, that’s when I felt myself go into a rage. I wanted to throttle Alex but then retreated. I just wanted to leave and go home. The rest of the day I silently fumed. And then, when things were, well, the way they usually are at home, I wanted to explode. I felt the same seething rage I had felt at work. I guess I was triggered to blow when I set foot into the familiar mess at home; I just wanted to blow off steam. I was … well, really afraid that I could hurt you or the kids. So instead, I just went off to read the paper and simmered silently behind my paper fortress. I didn’t want to blow up at you and the kids. Really, what I wanted was the calm contact I am getting from you now.” This state of calm, unlike the temporary relief provided by the Valium in the first scenario, is a real shift in his perception of safety, an enduring one. It is achieved by a process of self-regulation and social engagement, rather than the temporary masking offered by a tranquilizer—though both act to relax the tight muscles. This collaborative experience is what brings Bob and Jane closer together. The feeling of combativeness that Bob experienced at the office was powerful, focused and motivating. Had he not stopped himself, he might have entered into a productive negotiation with Alex. However, when he thwarted this process (out of a perceived threat that may or may not have even really existed), his directed feeling of healthy aggression (for getting what he needed and protecting what he had), erupted into (impotent) rage. This abrupt transition—from a fluid, organizing feeling process into a disorganizing, nonproductive, reactive emotional state —is what was so brilliantly studied by Nina Bull. So why do we get stuck with our negative emotional states, habitually wearing them like our only set of shirt and trousers? Many people (like the young samurai) use their rage to intimidate. Others indulge habitual sadness and remain helpless victims. For Bob and Jane (in the initial scenario), their emotions served to separate them.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  It was with indescribable vexation that the gentle- man, who had undertaken to humanize her, carried back this answer to his master, whom he urged to carry his point by all possible means, representing to him that it would be shameful for him to have undertaken such a conquest and not achieve it. The young prince, who wished to employ only fair means, and who was afraid, besides, of his mother's anger if the story got abroad and reached her ears, durst not take any further step, until at last the gentleman suggested to him an expedient, which seemed to him so good, that he felt already as if the fair one was his own. To this end he spoke to the butler, who, being ready to serve his master on any ^66 THE HEPTAMERON OF THE lA^^r/42. terms, consented to everything required of him. It was arranged, then, that the butler should invite his wife and his sister-in-law to go see their vintage at a house he had near the forest ; he did so, and they agreed to the proposal. The appointed day being come, he gave notice to the prince, who was to go to the same place, accompanied only by his gentleman. But it pleased God that his mother was that day adorning a most beautiful cabinet, and had all her children to help her; so that the proper time passed by before the prince could get away. This was no fault of the butler's, who had fully performed his part ; for he made his wife counter- feit illness, and when he was on horseback with his sister-in-law on the croup, she came and told him that she could not go. But the hour having passed by and no prince appearing, " I believe," said he to his sister- in-law, " we may as well go back to town." " Who hinders us } " said Francoise. " I was waiting for the prince, who had promised to come," said the butler. His sister, clearly discerning his wicked purpose, replied, " Wait no longer for him, brother ; for I know that he will not come to-day." He acquiesced, and took her home again. On arriving there she let him know her dissatisfaction, and told him plainly he was the devil's valet, and did more than he was commanded ; for she was very sure that it was his work and the gentleman's, not the prince's ; that they both liked better to flatter his weaknesses, and gain money, than to do their duty as good servants ; but that since she knew this she would no longer remain in his house. Thereupon she sent for her brother to take her away to his own country, and immediately quitted hei sister's house. The butler having missed his blow, went to the Fifth Jay.] QUEE2V OF //A VARRF. ^67

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  That experience in common made Gertie and myself great friends. She used to kiss me and say I was sweet: once even she let me see her breasts when I told her a girl (I didn’t say who it was) had shown hers to me once: her breasts were nearly as large as my sister’s and very pretty. Gertie even let me touch her legs right up to the knee; but as soon as I tried to go further, she would pull down her dress with a frown. Still I was always going higher, making progress; persistence brings one closer to any goal; but alas, it was near the end of the Christmas holidays and though I returned to Rhyl at Easter, I never saw Gertie again. When I was just over thirteen I tried mainly out of pity to get up a revolt of the fags, and at first had a partial success, but some of the little fellows talked and as a ringleader I got a trouncing. The Monitors threw me down on my face on a long desk: one sixth form boy sat on my head and another on my feet, and a third, it was Jones, laid on with an ashplant. I bore it without a groan but I can never describe the storm of rage and hate that boiled in me. Do English fathers really believe that such work is a part of education? It made me murderous. When they let me up, I looked at Jones and if looks could kill, he’d have had short shrift. He tried to hit me but I dodged the blow and went out to plot revenge. Jones was the head of the cricket First Eleven in which I too was given a place just for my bowling. Vernon of the Sixth was the chief bowler, but I was second, the only boy in the lower school who was in the Eleven at all. Soon afterwards a team from some other school came over to play us: the rival captains met before the tent, all on their best behaviour; for some reason, Vernon not being ready or something, I was given the new ball. A couple of the masters stood near. Jones lost the toss and said to the rival captain very politely, “If you’re ready. Sir! we’ll go out.” The other captain bowed smiling, my chance had come: “I’m not going to play with you, you brute!” I cried and dashed the ball in Jones’s face.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  The Germanic ideal which is also the English and American ideal, of the conquering male that despises all weaker and less intelligent races and is eager to enslave or annihilate them, must be set aside. A hundred years ago, there were only fifteen millions of English and American folk; today there are nearly two hundred millions and it is plain that in another century or so, they will be the most numerous, as they are already by far the most powerful, race on earth. The most numerous folk hitherto, the Chinese, has set a good example by remaining within its own boundaries, but these conquering, colonizing Anglo-Saxons threaten to overrun the earth and destroy all other varieties of the species man. Even now we annihilate the Red Indian because he is not subservient, while we are content to degrade the negro who doesn’t threaten our domination. Is it wise to desire only one flower in this garden of a world? Is it wise to blot out the better varieties while preserving the inferior? And the Anglo-Saxon ideal for the individual is even baser and more inept. Intent on satisfying his own conquering lust, he has compelled the female of the species to an unnatural chastity of thought and deed and word. He has thus made of his wife a meek, upper-servant or slave (die Hausfrau), who has hardly any intellectual interests and whose spiritual being only finds a narrow outlet in her mother-instincts. The daughter he has labored to degrade into the strangest sort of two-legged tame fowl ever imagined: she must seek a mate while concealing or denying all her strongest sex-feelings: in fine, she should be as cold-blooded as a frog and as wily and ruthless as an Apache on the war-path. The ideal he has set before himself is confused and confusing: really he desires to be healthy and strong while gratifying all his sexual appetites. The highest type, however, the English gentleman, has pretty constantly in mind the individualistic ideal of what he calls an “all-round man”, a man whose body and mind is harmoniously developed and brought to a comparatively high state of efficiency. He has no inkling of the supreme truth that every man and woman possesses some small facet of the soul which reflects life in a peculiar way or, to use the language of religion, sees God as no other soul born into the world, can ever see Him.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  He waved his hand. 1 said we would not fight James Baldwin 190 any more. The Americans have no sense of doom, none whatever. They do not recognize doom when they see it/ He produced a bottle from beneath the sink. 'Jacques left a bottle of cognac here. Let us have a little drink—for the road, as I believe you people say sometimes.' I watched him. He carefully poured two drinks. I saw that he was shaking—with rage, or pain, or both. He handed me my glass. *A la tienne/ he said. *A la tienne* We drank. I could not keep myself from ask- ing: 'Giovanni. What are you going to do now?' *0h,' he said, 1 have friends. I will think of things to do. Tonight, for example, I shall have supper with Jacques. No doubt, tomorrow night I shall also have supper with Jacques. He has become very fond of me. He thinks you are a monster/ 'Giovanni,' I Please be careful.' said, helplessly, Tdc careful. He gave me an ironical smile. Thank you,' he said. Tou should have given me that advice the night we met.' That was the last time we really spoke to one another. I stayed with him until morning and then I threw my things into a bag and took them away with me, to Hella's place. I will not forget the last time he looked at me. The morning light filled the room, remind- ing me of so many mornings and of the mom-

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

  THE ANGER ICEBERG Another reason anger is such a powerful emotion is that it rarely shows up alone. Instead, it’s usually accompanied by other emotions that you may not know how to access or express, or think you have a right to feel, like grief, guilt, shame, embarrassment, anxiety, loneliness, hopelessness, or a combination thereof. Researchers from the Gottman Institute say that it can be helpful to think of anger like an iceberg. With icebergs, the tip may look like a large mass, but in reality it’s only a small part that we see. Most of the iceberg is actually hidden below the water. This is how anger can work, too. In fact, anger is commonly referred to as a secondary or “indicator” emotion. It steps in and points out a whole host of other big and raw emotions roiling under the surface. For example, let’s say you’re annoyed that you have to go to a friend’s baby shower. Having had a miscarriage yourself, the last thing you want is to be around cute babies or happy mothers. You’re envious your friend got pregnant so easily, when it’s been so hard and painful for you to conceive. These complicated feelings are completely justified. They don’t make you a jerk; they make you a normal, hurting human. I’ll be honest, if I had to watch a father-daughter dance at a wedding after Dad passed, I’d have tossed a banana peel on the floor and prayed for a full-on wipeout (and pileup). Anger indicates that there’s more to the story than meets the eye. It asks us to be courageous and go deeper. To explore the pain beneath the outrage. The heartbreak, rejection, sadness, fear, betrayal, and so on. Our anger never needs to be justified to make sense. Your pain, like mine, isn’t looking for validation; it just wants permission to exist. Now, we may not always be able to identify the whole emotional enchilada right away. It’s easy to go from zero to 60 without realizing what else is at work. But as we become more skilled at approaching our anger with curiosity, compassion, and care, instead of feeling shame, we’re better able to regulate our emotions and less likely to lash out at ourselves and others. CARING FOR YOUR ANGER When it comes to defusing red-hot rage, the goal is to quell the fire and calm your nervous system. Below are many suggestions, but you don’t have to try them all or apply them in any particular sequence. You’ll also notice that some suggestions overlap with tips from other chapters—that’s because the methods for restoring your nervous system are very similar. Breathe: Anger tells your brain that you’re in crisis. Breathwork reminds you that right now, in this moment, you are safe. We explored the power of elongating your exhale in the last chapter. My next favorite exercise is called box breathing. Give it a try now. Inhale through your nose for four counts.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  I wade through summer ghosts betrayed by vision hers and my own becoming dragonfish to survive the horrors we are living with tortured lungs adapting to breathe blood. A woman measures her life’s damage my eyes are caves, chunks of etched rock tied to the ghost of a black boy whistling crying and frightened her tow-headed children cluster like little mirrors of despair their father’s hands upon them and soundlessly a woman begins to weep. [1981] A Poem For Women In Rage A killing summer heat wraps up the city emptied of all who are not bound to stay a black woman waits for a white woman leans against the railing in the Upper Westside street at intermission the distant sounds of Broadway dim to lulling until I can hear the voice of sparrows like a promise I await the woman I love our slice of time a place beyond the city’s pain. In the corner phonebooth a woman glassed in by reflections of the street between us her white face dangles a tapestry of disasters seen through a veneer of order her mouth drawn like an ill-used roadmap to eyes without core, a bottled heart impeccable credentials of old pain. The veneer cracks open hate launches through the glaze into my afternoon our eyes touch like hot wire and the street snaps into nightmare a woman with white eyes is clutching a bottle of Fleischmann’s gin is fumbling at her waistband is pulling a butcher knife from her ragged pants her hand arcs backward “You Black Bitch!” the heavy blade spins out toward me slow motion years of fury surge upward like a wall I do not hear it clatter to the pavement at my feet. A gear of ancient nightmare churns swift in familiar dread and silence but this time I am awake, released I smile. Now. 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

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. Look with what He begins His reproof of them, For they say, and do not. Every one who transgresses the Law is deserving of blame, but especially he who has the post of instruction. And this for a threefold cause; first, because he is a transgressor; secondly, because when he ought to set others right, be himself halts; thirdly, because, being in the rank of a teacher, his influence is more corrupting. Again, He brings a further charge against them, that they oppress those that are put under them; They bind heavy burdens; in this He shews a double evil in them; that they exacted without any allowance the utmost rigour of life from those that were put under them, while they allowed themselves large licence herein. But a good ruler should do the contrary of this, to be to himself a severe judge, to others a merciful one. Observe in what forcible words He utters His reproof; He says not they cannot, but they will not; and not, lift them, but touch them with one of their fingers. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. And to the Scribes and Pharisees of whom He is now speaking, heavy burdens not to be borne are the commandments of the Law; as St. Peter speaks in the Acts, Why seek ye to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear? (Acts 15:10.) For commending the burdens of the Law by fabulous proofs, they bound as it were the shoulders of the heart of their hearers with bands, that thus tied as though with proof of reason to them, they might not fling them off; but themselves did not in the least measure fulfil them, that is, not only did not wholly, but did not so much as attempt to. GLOSS. (interlin.) Or, bind burdens, that is, gather traditions from all sides, not to aid, but to burden the conscience. JEROME. But all these things, the shoulders, the finger, the burdens, and the bands with which they bind the burdens, have a spiritual meaning. Herein also the Lord speaks generally against all masters who enjoin high things, but do not even little things.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Most women have not developed tools for facing anger constructively. CR groups in the past, largely white, dealt with how to express anger, usually at the world of men. And these groups were made up of white women who shared the terms of their oppressions. There was usually little attempt to articulate the genuine differences between women, such as those of race, color, age, class, and sexual identity. There was no apparent need at that time to examine the contradictions of self, woman as oppressor. There was work on expressing anger, but very little on anger directed against each other. No tools were developed to deal with other women’s anger except to avoid it, deflect it, or flee from it under a blanket of guilt. I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. If I speak to you in anger, at least I have spoken to you: I have not put a gun to your head and shot you down in the street; I have not looked at your bleeding sister’s body and asked, “What did she do to deserve it?” This was the reaction of two white women to Mary Church Terrell’s telling of the lynching of a pregnant Black woman whose baby was then torn from her body. That was in 1921, and Alice Paul had just refused to publicly endorse the enforcement of the Nineteenth Amendment for all women—by refusing to endorse the inclusion of women of Color, although we had worked to help bring about that amendment. The angers between women will not kill us if we can articulate them with precision, if we listen to the content of what is said with at least as much intensity as we defend ourselves against the manner of saying. When we turn from anger we turn from insight, saying we will accept only the designs already known, deadly and safely familiar. I have tried to learn my anger’s usefulness to me, as well as its limitations. For women raised to fear, too often anger threatens annihilation. In the male construct of brute force, we were taught that our lives depended upon the good will of patriarchal power. The anger of others was to be avoided at all costs because there was nothing to be learned from it but pain, a judgment that we had been bad girls, come up lacking, not done what we were supposed to do. And if we accept our powerlessness, then of course any anger can destroy us.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Home goes the husband, and finds his wife looking handsomer and gayer than usual, delighted as she was to have hindered her servant from committing a sin, and to have convicted her husband without any more incon- venience to herself than having passed a night without sleeping. The husband, seeing her in such good spirits, said to himself, " She would not look so merry if she knew what has happened." Falling into chat with her upon indifferent matters, he took her hand, and saw that the ring she always wore was not on her finger. Aghast, and with a trembling voice, he asked her what she had done with it. This gave her the opportunity she was on the watch for to let loose upon him, and she seized it with avidity. " Oh, you most abominable of men ! " she said, " from whom do you suppose you took it } You thought you had it from the servant. You thought it was for her you did more than you ever did for me. The first time you came to bed to her, I thought you made as much of her as it was possible to do ; but after you left the room and came again the second time, it seemed as though you were the very devil of incontinence. What infatuation has possessed you to praise me so much, you wretch } You have had me long enough, and never cared about me. Is it the beauty and plumpness of your servant ■ that made the pleasure seem so sweet to you .-' No, base man, it is the fire of your own disorderly lust that makes you so blindly and madly in love with the servant, that in the furious fit you were in I believe you would have The poor husband was utterly confounded and horrified. Photographed from Life. Copyright, 1902, by D. Trenor. First day.\ QUEEN OF NA VARRE. gy taken a she-goat with a nightcap on for a fine girl. It is high time, husband, that you should mend your ways* and content yourself with me, who am your wife, and, as you know, an honest woman, as much as you did when you mistook me for a vicious woman. My only object in the matter has been to withdraw you from vice, so that in our old days we may live in amity and repose of conscience ; for if you choose to continue the life you have led hitherto, I would rather we should separate than that I should see you daily treading the path that leads to hell, and at the same time using up your body and your substance. But if you resolve to behave better, and to fear God and keep his commandments, I am willing to forget the past, as I trust God will forgive the ingrat- itude I am guilty of in not loving him as much as I ought."

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 3: Those who are disposed to contumely, whether through having been contemned, or because they wish to contemn others, are incited to anger and daring, which are manly passions and arouse the human spirit to attempt difficult things. Hence they make a man think that he is going to suffer something in the future, so that while they are disposed in that way they are pitiless, according to Prov. 27:4: “Anger hath no mercy, nor fury when it breaketh forth.” For the same reason the proud are without pity, because they despise others, and think them wicked, so that they account them as suffering deservedly whatever they suffer. Hence Gregory says (Hom. in Evang. xxxiv) that “false godliness,” i.e. of the proud, “is not compassionate but disdainful.” Whether mercy is a virtue?Objection 1: It would seem that mercy is not a virtue. For the chief part of virtue is choice as the Philosopher states (Ethic. ii, 5). Now choice is “the desire of what has been already counselled” (Ethic. iii, 2). Therefore whatever hinders counsel cannot be called a virtue. But mercy hinders counsel, according to the saying of Sallust (Catilin.): “All those that take counsel about matters of doubt, should be free from . . . anger . . . and mercy, because the mind does not easily see aright, when these things stand in the way.” Therefore mercy is not a virtue. Objection 2: Further, nothing contrary to virtue is praiseworthy. But nemesis is contrary to mercy, as the Philosopher states (Rhet. ii, 9), and yet it is a praiseworthy passion (Rhet. ii, 9). Therefore mercy is not a virtue. Objection 3: Further, joy and peace are not special virtues, because they result from charity, as stated above ([2595]Q[28], A[4];[2596] Q[29], A[4]). Now mercy, also, results from charity; for it is out of charity that we weep with them that weep, as we rejoice with them that rejoice. Therefore mercy is not a special virtue. Objection 4: Further, since mercy belongs to the appetitive power, it is not an intellectual virtue, and, since it has not God for its object, neither is it a theological virtue. Moreover it is not a moral virtue, because neither is it about operations, for this belongs to justice; nor is it about passions, since it is not reduced to one of the twelve means mentioned by the Philosopher (Ethic. ii, 7). Therefore mercy is not a virtue. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Civ. Dei ix, 5): “Cicero in praising Caesar expresses himself much better and in a fashion at once more humane and more in accordance with religious feeling, when he says: ‘Of all thy virtues none is more marvelous or more graceful than thy mercy.’” Therefore mercy is a virtue.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  But the strength of women lies in recognizing differences between us as creative, and in standing to those distortions which we inherited without blame, but which are now ours to alter. The angers of women can transform difference through insight into power. For anger between peers births change, not destruction, and the discomfort and sense of loss it often causes is not fatal, but a sign of growth. My response to racism is anger. That anger has eaten clefts into my living only when it remained unspoken, useless to anyone. It has also served me in classrooms without light or learning, where the work and history of Black women was less than a vapor. It has served me as fire in the ice zone of uncomprehending eyes of white women who see in my experience and the experience of my people only new reasons for fear or guilt. And my anger is no excuse for not dealing with your blindness, no reason to withdraw from the results of your own actions. When women of Color speak out of the anger that laces so many of our contacts with white women, we are often told that we are “creating a mood of hopelessness,” “preventing white women from getting past guilt,” or “standing in the way of trusting communication and action.” All these quotes come directly from letters to me from members of this organization within the last two years. One woman wrote, “Because you are Black and Lesbian, you seem to speak with the moral authority of suffering.” Yes, I am Black and Lesbian, and what you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority. There is a difference. To turn aside from the anger of Black women with excuses or the pretexts of intimidation is to award no one power—it is merely another way of preserving racial blindness, the power of unaddressed privilege, unbreached, intact. Guilt is only another form of objectification. Oppressed peoples are always being asked to stretch a little more, to bridge the gap between blindness and humanity. Black women are expected to use our anger only in the service of other people’s salvation or learning. But that time is over. 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. What woman here is so enamoured of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another woman’s face? What woman’s terms of oppression have become precious and necessary to her as a ticket into the fold of the righteous, away from the cold winds of self-scrutiny?

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  The first people who interviewed me in white coats from behind a computer were only interested in my health-care benefits and proposed method of payment. Those crucial facts determined what kind of plastic ID card I would be given, and without a plastic ID card, no one at all was allowed upstairs to see any doctor, as I was told by the uniformed, pistoled guards at all the stairwells. From the moment I was ushered into the doctor’s office and he saw my x-rays, he proceeded to infantilize me with an obviously well-practiced technique. When I told him I was having second thoughts about a liver biopsy, he glanced at my chart. Racism and sexism joined hands across his table as he saw I taught at a university. “Well, you look like an intelligent girl,” he said, staring at my one breast all the time he was speaking. “Not to have this biopsy immediately is like sticking your head in the sand.” Then he went on to say that he would not be responsible when I wound up one day screaming in agony in the corner of his office! I asked this specialist in liver tumors about the dangers of a liver biopsy spreading an existing malignancy, or even encouraging it in a borderline tumor. He dismissed my concerns with a wave of his hand, saying, instead of answering, that I really did not have any other sensible choice. I would like to think that this doctor was sincerely motivated by a desire for me to seek what he truly believed to be the only remedy for my sickening body, but my faith in that scenario is considerably diminished by his $250 consultation fee and his subsequent medical report to my own doctor containing numerous supposedly clinical observations of obese abdomen and remaining pendulous breast. In any event, I can thank him for the fierce shard lancing through my terror that shrieked there must be some other way, this doesn’t feel right to me. If this is cancer and they cut me open to find out, what is stopping that intrusive action from spreading the cancer, or turning a questionable mass into an active malignancy? All I was asking for was the reassurance of a realistic answer to my real questions, and that was not forthcoming. I made up my mind that if I was going to die in agony on somebody’s office floor, it certainly wasn’t going to be his! I needed information, and pored over books on the liver in Barnes & Noble’s medical textbook section on Fifth Avenue for hours. I learned, among other things, that the liver is the largest, most complex, and most generous organ in the human body. But that did not help me very much.