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 The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  And these same white immigrant settlers were giving blankets lethal with smallpox germs to the indigenous peoples of North America, the American Indians. Each of you has come here today to touch some piece of your own power, for a purpose. I urge you to approach that work with a particular focus and urgency, for a terrible amount of Wurundjeri women’s blood has already been shed in order for you to sit and write here. I do not say these things to instigate an orgy of guilt, but rather to encourage an examination of what the excavation and use of the true language of difference can mean within your living. You and I can talk about the language of difference, but that will always remain essentially a safe discussion, because this is not my place. I will move on. But it is the language of the Black Aboriginal women of this country that you must learn to hear and to feel. And as your writing and your lives intersect within that language, you will come to decide what mistress your art must serve. October 24, 1985 East Lansing, Michigan Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the invasion of Grenada. The smallest nation in the western hemisphere occupied by the largest. I spoke about it to a group of Black women here tonight. It’s depressing to see how few of us remember, how few of us still seem to care. The conference on “The Black Woman Writer and the Diaspora” being held here is problematic in some ways, particularly in the unclear position of Ellen Kuzwayo, who had come all the way from South Africa to give the keynote address and arrived here to find the schedule shifted. But it was so good to see Ellen again. I’m sorry to hear her sister in Botswana has had another mastectomy. It’s been very exciting to sit down with African and Caribbean women writers whom I’ve always wanted to meet. Octavia Butler is here also, and Andrea Canaan from New Orleans. I haven’t seen her in over a year, and the look in her eyes when she saw me made me really angry, but it also made me realize how much weight I’ve lost in the past year and how bad my color’s been since I came home from Australia. I’ve got to go see Dr. C. for a checkup when I get home.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  It’s been very reassuring to find a medical doctor who agrees with my view of the dangers involved. And I certainly don’t reject nondamaging treatment, which is why I’m taking these shots, even though I hate giving myself injections. But that’s a small price balanced against the possibility of cancer. June 20, 1984 Berlin I didn’t go to London because I loved book fairs, but because the idea of the First International Feminist Bookfair excited me, and in particular, I wanted to make contact with the Black feminists of England. Well, the fact remains: the First International Feminist Bookfair was a monstrosity of racism, and this racism coated and distorted much of what was good, creative, and visionary about such a fair. The white women organizers’ defensiveness to any question of where the Black women were is rooted in that tiresome white guilt that serves neither us nor them. It reminded me of those old tacky battles of the seventies in the States: a Black woman would suggest that if white women wished to be truly feminist, they would have to examine and alter some of their actions vis-à-vis women of Color. And this discussion would immediately be perceived as an attack upon their very essence. So wasteful and destructive. I think the organizers of the bookfair really believed that by inviting foreign Black women they were absolving themselves of any fault in ignoring input from local Black women. But we should be able to learn from our errors. They totally objectified all Black women by not dealing with the Black women of the London community. Now if anything is to be learned from that whole experience, it should be so that the next International Feminist Bookfair does not repeat those errors. And there must be another. But we don’t get there from here by ignoring the mud in between those two positions. If the white women’s movement does not learn from its errors, like any other movement, it will die by them. When I stood up for my first reading to a packed house with no Black women’s faces, after I’d gotten letter after letter from Black British women asking when was I coming to England, that was the kiss- off. I knew immediately what was up, and the rest is history. Of course, I was accused of “brutalizing” the organizers by simply asking why Black women were absent. And if my yelling and “jumping up and down” got dirty looks and made white women cry and say all kinds of outrageous nonsense about me, I know it also reinforced other Black women’s perceptions about racism here in the women’s movement, and contributed to further solidarity among Black women of different communities.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  But you did not know it because we did not identify ourselves, so now you can say that Black Lesbians and Gay men have nothing to do with the struggles of the Black Nation. And I am not alone. When you read the words of Langston Hughes you are reading the words of a Black Gay man. When you read the words of Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Angelina Weld Grimké, poets of the Harlem Renaissance, you are reading the words of Black Lesbians. When you listen to the life-affirming voices of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, you are hearing Black Lesbian women. When you see the plays and read the words of Lorraine Hansberry, you are reading the words of a woman who loved women deeply. Today, Lesbians and Gay men are some of the most active and engaged members of Art Against Apartheid, a group which is making visible and immediate our cultural responsibilities against the tragedy of South Africa. We have organizations such as the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, Dykes Against Racism Everywhere, and Men of All Colors Together, all of which are committed to and engaged in antiracist activity. Homophobia and heterosexism mean you allow yourselves to be robbed of the sisterhood and strength of Black Lesbian women because you are afraid of being called a Lesbian yourself. Yet we share so many concerns as Black women, so much work to be done. The urgency of the destruction of our Black children and the theft of young Black minds are joint urgencies. Black children shot down or doped up on the streets of our cities are priorities for all of us. The fact of Black women’s blood flowing with grim regularity in the streets and living rooms of Black communities is not a Black Lesbian rumor. It is sad statistical truth. The fact that there is widening and dangerous lack of communication around our differences between Black women and men is not a Black Lesbian plot. It is a reality that is starkly clarified as we see our young people becoming more and more uncaring of each other. Young Black boys believing that they can define their manhood between a sixth-grade girl’s legs, growing up believing that Black women and girls are the fitting target for their justifiable furies rather than the racist structures grinding us all into dust, these are not Black Lesbian myths. These are sad realities of Black communities today and of immediate concern to us all. We cannot afford to waste each other’s energies in our common battles. What does homophobia mean?

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

  Dr. Bigge thought the offence very grave: “the morals of a boy”, he declared, “were the most important part of his education: the matter must be probed to the bottom: he thought that on reflection I would not deny that I had seen a College boy that night in colors and in suspicious company.” I thereupon got up and freed my soul; the whole crew seemed to me mere hypocrites. “In the Doctor’s own House”, I said, “where I take evening preparation, I could give him a list of boys who are known as lovers, notorious even, and so long as this vice is winked at throughout the school, I shall be no party to persecuting anybody for yielding to legitimate and natural passion.” I had hardly got out the last words when Cotteril, the son of the Bishop of Edinburgh, got up and called upon me to free his House from any such odious and unbearable suspicion. I retorted immediately that there was a pair in his house known as “The Inseparables” and went on to state that my quarrel was with the whole boardinghouse system and not with individual masters who, I was fain to believe, did their best. The Vice-principal, Dr. Newton, was the only one who even recognized my good motives: he came away from the meeting with me and advised me to consult with his wife. After this I was practically boycotted by the masters: I had dared to say in public what Wolverton and others of them had admitted to me in private a dozen times. Mrs. Newton, the vice-principal’s wife, was one of the leaders of Brighton society: she was what the French call une maitresse femme, and a born leader in any society. She advised me to form girls’ classes in literature for the half-holidays each week; was good enough to send out the circulars and lend her drawing-room for my first lectures. In a week I had fifty pupils who paid me half a crown a lesson and I soon found myself drawing ten pounds a week in addition to my pay. I saved every penny and thus came in a year to monetary freedom. At every crisis in my life I have been helped by good friends who have aided me out of pure kindness at cost of time and trouble to themselves. Smith helped me in Lawrence and Mrs. Newton at Brighton out of bountiful human sympathy. Before this even I had got to know a man named Harold Hamilton, manager of the London & County Bank, I think, at Brighton. It amused him to see how quickly and regularly my balance grew: soon I confided my plans to him and my purpose: he was all sympathy. I lent him books and his daughter Ada was assiduous at all my lectures.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  206 JamesBaldwin come, and Guillaume has hiswill.I think ifthis hadnot happened, Giovanniwouldnot have killedhtm. For,with his pleasure taken,andwhile Gio- vannistilllies suffocating, Guillaumebecomes a business man once moreand,walking up anddown, givesexcellent reasons whyGiovanni cannot workfor him anymore. Beneathwhat- everreasonsGuillaume invents,thereal one lies hidden, andtheyboth, dimly,intheir different fashions,seeit: Giovanni, like afallingmovie star, has lost his drawing power. Everything isknownabouthtm,hissecrecy has beendis- covered. Giovannicertainly feelsthis andthe ragewhich hasbeen building inhim formany monthsbegins tobe swollen nowwdth themem- ory ofGuillaume'shandsand mouth. Hestares atGuillaume in silence for amomentand then begins to shout. And Guillaume answers him. Withevery wordexchanged Giovanni's head beginsto roarand ablackness comesandgoes before hiseyes. AndGuillaumeis in seventh heaven andbegtns topranceabout the room — hehas scarcely evergottensomuchforso little before. Heplaysthissceneforallit'sworth, deeply rejoictnginthefactthatGiovanni's face grows scarlet,and his voicethick,watching with pure deUghtthe bone-hard musclesinhis neck.Andhe says something, forhethinksthe tableshave been turned;hesayssomething, one phrase,one insult, onemockery too many; andin a spUt second,in his ownshocked si- GIOVANNI'S ROOM 207 lence, in Giovannfs eyes, he realizes that he has unleashed something he cannot turn back. Giovanni certainly did not mean todo it.But he grabbed him, he struck him. Andwith that touch, and with each blow, the intolerable weightat the bottom of his heart beganto lift: now itwas Giovanni's turnto be delighted.The roomwas overturned, the fabrics were shredded, the odor of perfume was thick. Guillaume strug- gled to getoutof the room,but Giovannifol- lowed him everywhere:now it was Guillaume's turntobe surrounded. And perhapsatthevery moment Guillaumethoughthe had brokenfree, when he had reached the door perhaps,Gio- vannilungedafterhim andcaught him bythe sash ofthe dressing gown andwrappedthe sash around hisneck.Thenhesimplyheld on,sob- bing, becoming lightereverymomentasGuil- laume grewheavier, tighteningthe sashand cursing. Then Guillaume fell.AndGiovanni fell —back intothe room,thestreets, the world, into the presence andthe shadow ofdeath. Bythe time wefound thisgreat house it was clear that I had no right to comehere. By the time we found it, Idid not even want tosee it. But bythis time, also, there wasnothing else to do. There wasnothing else I wanted todo. I thought, itis true, ofremaining in Paris in order tobe close to the trial, perhaps to visithim in prison. But Iknew there wasno reason to do

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

  Billy’s experience with higher education is typical of what happened to many of the young people in this study who had college-educated parents. In his case, support was cut off in the middle of his freshman year. For others the cut came later or was aborted from the start. These children worked hard to gain admittance to a public university with high standards and often found part-time jobs to help pay tuition. Their parents promised to foot all or part of the remaining expenses but then broke their promise, with no warning. Checks suddenly failed to arrive. Embarrassed, discouraged, and angry, they opted for a solution that fit their earlier experiences: they dropped out and gave up or they faced years of hard work that they viewed as simply another legacy of their parents’ divorce. Their parents, meanwhile, offered no explanation or apology for their failure to help. Numbers sometimes tell a very dramatic story. The people in our divorce and comparison groups grew up side by side on the same streets, attended the same public high schools, and most of their fathers earned the same good incomes. When I compared everyone’s financial support for college, I was astounded. A little less than 30 percent of the youngsters from divorced families received full or consistently partial support for college compared with almost 90 percent of youngsters in intact families.6 That’s a whopping difference that speaks volumes about how children of divorce lead an entirely different life compared to their next-door peers in intact families. Their entry into adulthood begins painfully and precipitously—and very differently from their closest friends. The bottom line is that millions of young people, who might have expected and received financial help and encouragement from their families, now hear after divorce: You want a college education? You pay for it.

• 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

  But when a woman on welfare says, “I can’t afford it,” she means she is surviving on an amount of money that was barely subsistence in 1972, and she often does not have enough to eat. Yet the National Women’s Studies Association here in 1981 holds a conference in which it commits itself to responding to racism, yet refuses to waive the registration fee for poor women and women of Color who wished to present and conduct workshops. This has made it impossible for many women of Color—for instance, Wilmette Brown, of Black Women for Wages for Housework—to participate in this conference. Is this to be merely another case of the academy discussing life within the closed circuits of the academy? To the white women present who recognize these attitudes as familiar, but most of all, to all my sisters of Color who live and survive thousands of such encounters—to my sisters of Color who like me still tremble their rage under harness, or who sometimes question the expression of our rage as useless and disruptive (the two most popular accusations)—I want to speak about anger, my anger, and what I have learned from my travels through its dominions. Everything can be used / except what is wasteful / (you will need / to remember this when you are accused of destruction.) * Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change. And when I speak of change, I do not mean a simple switch of positions or a temporary lessening of tensions, nor the ability to smile or feel good. I am speaking of a basic and radical alteration in those assumptions underlining our lives. I have seen situations where white women hear a racist remark, resent what has been said, become filled with fury, and remain silent because they are afraid. That unexpressed anger lies within them like an undetonated device, usually to be hurled at the first woman of Color who talks about racism. But anger expressed and translated into action in the service of our vision and our future is a liberating and strengthening act of clarification, for it is in the painful process of this translation that we identify who are our allies with whom we have grave differences, and who are our genuine enemies.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  12 James Baldwin ocean would not have beendeepenough to drown our shameand terror. Butthegirls,no doubt, hadsome Intimation of this, possibly from the waywe whistled,andthey ignored us. Asthe sunwas setting we started up the boardwalk towards hishouse, with our wet bathing trunkson under ourtrousers. AndI think it beganin the shower. Iknow thatI felt something— as wewerehorsing aroundinthatsmall, steamyroom, stinging each other withwet towels — which I hadnot felt before,which mysteriously, and yetaim- lessly, includedhim. I rememberin myself a heavy reluctance to get dressed: I blamed it on theheat.But we did get dressed,sort of, andweatecoldthingsoutof his icebox and drank alotofbeer. We must havegoneto the movies.I can't think of anyotherreason for our going outand I rememberwalking down the dark, tropicalBrooklyn streets withheat comingup from the pavementsandbanging fromthe walls ofhouseswith enough force to killaman, with allthe world's grownups, it seemed,sitting shrill and dishevelledonthe stoopsand alltheworld's childrenontheside- walksor in thegutters or hangingfrom fireescapes, with my armaround Joey's shoul- der.Iwasproud, I think, because hishead camejust below myear.We werewalkingalong and Joey wasmaldngdirty wisecracksand we werelaughing. Odd to remember,for the first timeinso long, how goodIfelt that night, how fondof Joey. CIOVANNrS ROOM 13 When we came back along those streetsit was quiet; we were quiettoo. We were very quiet in the apartment and sleepily got un- dressed inJoey's bedroom and went to bed. I fell asleep — for quitea while,I think. But I wokeup to find the light on and Joey examin- ing the pillow with great, ferocious care, *What's the matter?' 1 thinka bedbug bit me.' Tou slob. Yougot bedbugs?' 1 thinkone bitme.' Touever havea bedbugbiteyou before?' "No: Well, go backtosleep. You're dreaming.' He lookedatme withhis mouthopen and his darkeyes verybig.Itwasas thoughhe had just discoveredthat Iwas anexpertonbed- bugs. Ilaughed andgrabbed his head as Ihad done Godknows howmany timesbefore, when I wasplayingwithhimorwhen he hadannoyed me. But this time when Itouched him some- thinghappened inhimand inmewhich made thistouch differentfrom any touch either of us hadever known. Andhedid notresist,as he usuallydid, butlaywhere I hadpulledhim, against my chest. And I realized that my heart wasbeating in an awful wayandthat Joey was trembling against me andthe Ughtinthe room was very bright and hot. Istartedto move and to make some kind ofjoke but Joey mumbled something andI putmy head down tohear. Joey raised his head asIlowered mine and we kissed, as it were, by accident. Then, for the

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  where you provide and labour to discipline your dreams whose symbols are immortalized in lies of history told like fairy tales called power behind the throne called noble frontier drudge and we both know you are not white with rage or fury but only from bleeding too much while trudging behind a wagon and confidentially did you really conquer Donner Pass with only a handcart? My mothers nightmares are not yours but just as binding. If in your sleep you tasted a child’s blood on your teeth while your chained black hand could not rise to wipe away his death upon your lips perhaps you would consider then why I choose this brick and shitty stone over the good earth’s challenge of green. Your mothers nightmares are not mine but just as binding. We share more than a trap between our legs where long game howl back and forth across country finding less than what they bargained for but more than they ever feared so dreams or not, I think you will be back soon from Honduras where the woods are even thicker than in Oregon. You will see it finally as a choice too between loving women or loving trees and if only from the standpoint of free movement women win hands down. Love Poem Speak earth and bless me with what is richest make sky flow honey out of my hips rigid as mountains spread over a valley carved out by the mouth of rain. And I knew when I entered her I was high wind in her forests hollow fingers whispering sound honey flowed from the split cup impaled on a lance of tongues on the tips of her breasts on her navel and my breath howling into her entrances through lungs of pain. Greedy as herring-gulls or a child I swing out over the earth over and over again. Separation The stars dwindle and will not reward me even in triumph. It is possible to shoot a man in self defense and still notice how his red blood decorates the snow. Song For A Thin Sister Either heard or taught as girls we thought that skinny was funny or a little bit silly and feeling a pull toward the large and the colorful I would joke you when you grew too thin. But your new kind of hunger makes me chilly like danger for I see you forever retreating shrinking into a stranger in flight— and growing up black and fat I was so sure that skinny was funny or silly but always white. Revolution Is One Form Of Social Change When the man is busy making niggers it doesn’t matter much what shade you are. If he runs out of one particular color he can always switch to size and when he’s finished off the big ones he’ll just change to sex which is after all where it all began. The Brown Menace Or Poem To The Survival of Roaches Call me your deepest urge

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  It is a particular academic arrogance to assume any discussion of feminist theory without examining our many differences, and without a significant input from poor women, Black and Third World women, and lesbians. And yet, I stand here as a Black lesbian feminist, having been invited to comment within the only panel at this conference where the input of Black feminists and lesbians is represented. What this says about the vision of this conference is sad, in a country where racism, sexism, and homophobia are inseparable. To read this program is to assume that lesbian and Black women have nothing to say about existentialism, the erotic, women’s culture and silence, developing feminist theory, or heterosexuality and power. And what does it mean in personal and political terms when even the two Black women who did present here were literally found at the last hour? What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perimeters of change are possible and allowable. The absence of any consideration of lesbian consciousness or the consciousness of Third World women leaves a serious gap within this conference and within the papers presented here. For example, in a paper on material relationships between women, I was conscious of an either/or model of nurturing which totally dismissed my knowledge as a Black lesbian. In this paper there was no examination of mutuality between women, no systems of shared support, no interdependence as exists between lesbians and women-identified women. Yet it is only in the patriarchal model of nurturance that women “who attempt to emancipate themselves pay perhaps too high a price for the results,” as this paper states. For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world. Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women. Interdependency between women is the way to a freedom which allows the I to be, not in order to be used, but in order to be creative. This is a difference between the passive be and the active being. Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. Only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  The most vocal white woman says, “I think I’ve gotten a lot. I feel Black women really understand me a lot better now; they have a better idea of where I’m coming from.” As if understanding her lay at the core of the racist problem. •After fifteen years of a women’s movement which professes to address the life concerns and possible futures of all women, I still hear, on campus after campus, “How can we address the issues of racism? No women of Color attended.” Or, the other side of that statement, “We have no one in our department equipped to teach their work.” In other words, racism is a Black women’s problem, a problem of women of Color, and only we can discuss it. •After I read from my work entitled “Poems for Women in Rage,” * a white woman asks me: “Are you going to do anything with how we can deal directly with our anger? I feel it’s so important.” I ask, “How do you use your rage?” And then I have to turn away from the blank look in her eyes, before she can invite me to participate in her own annihilation. I do not exist to feel her anger for her. •White women are beginning to examine their relationships to Black women, yet often I hear them wanting only to deal with little colored children across the roads of childhood, the beloved nursemaid, the occasional second-grade classmate—those tender memories of what was once mysterious and intriguing or neutral. You avoid the childhood assumptions formed by the raucous laughter at Rastus and Alfalfa, the acute message of your mommy’s handerkerchief spread upon the park bench because I had just been sitting there, the indelible and dehumanizing portraits of Amos’n Andy and your daddy’s humorous bedtime stories. •I wheel my two-year-old daughter in a shopping cart through a supermarket in Eastchester in 1967, and a little white girl riding past in her mother’s cart calls out excitedly, “Oh look, Mommy, a baby maid!” And your mother shushes you, but she does not correct you. And so fifteen years later, at a conference on racism, you can still find that story humorous. But I hear your laughter is full of terror and disease. •A white academic welcomes the appearance of a collection by non-Black women of Color. * “It allows me to deal with racism without dealing with the harshness of Black women,” she says to me. •At an international cultural gathering of women, a well-known white American woman poet interrupts the reading of the work of women of Color to read her own poem, and then dashes off to an “important panel.” If women in the academy truly want a dialogue about racism, it will require recognizing the needs and the living contexts of other women. When an academic woman says, “I can’t afford it,” she may mean she is making a choice about how to spend her available money.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  Anger is loaded with information and energy. When I speak of women of Color, I do not only mean Black women. The woman of Color who is not Black and who charges me with rendering her invisible by assuming that her struggles with racism are identical with my own has something to tell me that I had better learn from, lest we both waste ourselves fighting the truths between us. If I participate, knowingly or otherwise, in my sister’s oppression and she calls me on it, to answer her anger with my own only blankets the substance of our exchange with reaction. It wastes energy. And yes, it is very difficult to stand still and to listen to another woman’s voice delineate an agony I do not share, or one to which I myself have contributed. In this place we speak removed from the more blatant reminders of our embattlement as women. This need not blind us to the size and complexities of the forces mounting against us and all that is most human within our environment. We are not here as women examining racism in a political and social vacuum. We operate in the teeth of a system for which racism and sexism are primary, established, and necessary props of profit. Women responding to racism is a topic so dangerous that when the local media attempt to discredit this conference they choose to focus upon the provision of lesbian housing as a diversionary device—as if the Hartford Courant dare not mention the topic chosen for discussion here, racism, lest it become apparent that women are in fact attempting to examine and to alter all the repressive conditions of our lives. Mainstream communication does not want women, particularly white women, responding to racism. It wants racism to be accepted as an immutable given in the fabric of your existence, like evening time or the common cold. So we are working in a context of opposition and threat, the cause of which is certainly not the angers which lie between us, but rather that virulent hatred leveled against all women, people of Color, lesbians and gay men, poor people—against all of us who are seeking to examine the particulars of our lives as we resist our oppressions, moving toward coalition and effective action. Any discussion among women about racism must include the recognition and the use of anger. This discussion must be direct and creative because it is crucial.

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

  We are very proud of how we helped each other. We are still very close.” SEVEN The Wages of Violence P eople commonly think there is a “his” divorce and a “her” divorce—two versions of the same events that hardly seem alike. But there is a third version, as valid and divergent as the others. It’s the “child’s view” of divorce. The child’s experience would astonish both parents … if they knew. L ARRY REMEMBERS the last night of his parents’ marriage in violent fragments, as if the memories had been cut into sections with a sharp knife and inserted deeply into his brain. He was not quite seven years old, small enough to crouch under the stairwell but big enough to realize what was happening. His father, who was drunk, followed his mother from room to room, slapping her across the face and upper body, screaming at her for sins Larry could not comprehend. The beatings had been going on for three years until that night, when his mother decided she had had enough. After her husband stomped out, she scooped up Larry and his younger sister and went to spend the night at a motel . Before that night, the Litrovski family had all lived in a green clapboard house in a middle-class section of Monterey, California, where Larry’s father, who had learned four languages from his parents, taught Russian at the Monterey Language Institute. He was a disturbed, angry man whose violent outbursts stemmed from early life experiences that neither he nor anyone close to him knew much about. Larry’s mother taught Spanish at the public high school, speaking so softly that her students often had to strain to hear her. Like many abused women, Larry’s mother was ambivalent about her decision to file for divorce. “Children need a father,” she said, with tears falling down both cheeks. “I gave him children and a purpose, it was a shared dream.” Her voice faltered as she struggled to explain herself: “I hope I was important to him at one time.” With that, she began to cry openly. Larry’s mother was heartbroken but her children were furious. Like most young children in the abusive families that I have seen, they made no connection between the violence and the decision to divorce. Their mother told them that she was ending the marriage because their father “drank too much,” but this explanation made absolutely no sense to them. Drinking what? Milk? Soda? Orange juice? How could they know what “drinking” meant or how it affected their father’s behavior? Nor did they link the drinking with his violence. They were aware that their father hurt their mother, and they were very distressed at her pain, but they did not understand his taunts or the depth of her humiliation. Larry was especially enraged at what he considered his mother’s outrageous decision.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  II The first time I touched my sisteralive I was surethe earth took note but we were not new false skin peeled off like gloves of fire yoked flameI was stripped to the tips of my fingers her song written into my palms my nostrils my belly welcome home in a languageI was pleased to relearn. III No cold spirit ever strolled through my bones on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue no dog mistook me for a bench nor a treenor a bone no lover envisioned my plump brown arms as wingsnor misnamed me condor but I can recall without counting eyes cancelling me out like an unpleasant appointment postage due stamped in yellowredpurple any color except Blackand choice and woman alive. IV I cannot recall the words of my first poem but I remember a promise I made my pen never to leave it lying in somebody else’s blood. Outlines I What hue lies in the slit of anger ample and pure as night what color the channel blood comes through? A Black woman and a white woman charter our courses close in a sea of calculated distance warned away by reefs of hidden anger histories rallied against us the friendly face of cheap alliance. Jonquils through the Mississippi snow you entered my vision with the force of hurled rock defended by distance and a warning smile fossil tearspitched over the heart’s wall for protection no other women grown beyond safety come back to tell us whispering past the turned shoulders of our closest we were not the first Black woman white woman altering course to fit our own journey. In this treacherous sea even the act of turning is almost fatally difficult coming around full face into a driving storm putting an end to running before the wind. On a helix of white the letting of blood the face of my love and rage coiled in my brown arms an ache in the bone we cannot alter history by ignoring it nor the contradictions who we are.

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

  The break did not surprise me: I had taught her that youth was the first requisite in a lover for a woman of her type: she had doubtless put my precepts into practice: Mr. Wilson was probably as near the ideal as I was and very much nearer to hand. The passions of the senses demand propinquity and satisfaction and nothing is more forgetful than pleasures of the flesh. If Mrs. Mayhew had given me little, I had given her even less of my better self. * * * HARD TIMES AND NEW LOVES Chapter XII. So far I had had more good fortune than falls to the lot of most youths starting in life; now I was to taste ill-luck and be tried as with fire. I had been so taken up with my own concerns that I had hardly given a thought to public affairs; now I was forced to take a wider view. One day Kate told me that Willie was heavily in arrears: he had gone back to Deacon Conkling’s to live on the other side of the Kaw River and I had naturally supposed that he had paid up everything before leaving. Now I found that he owed the Gregorys sixty dollars on his own account and more than that on mine. I went across to him really enraged. If he had warned me, I should not have minded so much; but to leave the Gregorys to tell me, made me positively dislike him and I did not know then the full extent of his selfishness. Years later my sister told me that he had written time and again to my father and got money from him, alleging that it was for me and that I was studying and couldn’t earn anything: “Willie kept us poor, Frank”, she said, and I could only bow my head; but if I had known this fact at the time, it would have changed all my relations with Willie. As it was, I found him in the depths. Carried away by his optimism, he had bought real estate in 1871 and 1872, mortgaged it for more than he gave and as the boom continued, he had repeated this game time and again till on paper and in paper he reckoned he had made a hundred thousand dollars. This he had told me and I was glad of it for his sake, unfeignedly glad.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  In Revelation, there is nothing but blazing hatred for Rome. Rome is a Babylon, the mother of prostitutes, drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs (Revelation 17:5-6). John hopes for nothing but Rome's total destruction. The explanation of this change in attitude lies in the wide development of Caesar-worship, which, with its accompanying persecution, is the background of Revelation. By the time of Revelation, Caesar-worship was the one religion which covered the whole Roman Empire; and it was because of their refusal to conform to its demands that Christians were persecuted and killed. Its essence was that the reigning Roman emperor, who was seen to embody the spirit of Rome, was divine. Once a year, everyone in the Empire had to appear before the magistrates to burn a pinch of incense to the godhead of Caesar and to say: `Caesar is Lord.' After they had done that, people were able to go away and worship any god or goddess they liked, as long as that worship did not infringe decency and good order; but they had to go through this ceremony in which they acknowledged the emperor's divinity. The reason was very simple. Rome had a vast and diverse empire, stretching from one end of the known world to the other. It had in it many languages, races and traditions. The problem was how to weld this varied mass into a unity. There was no unifying force such as a common religion, and none of the national religions could conceivably have become universal. Caesar-worship could. It was the one common act and belief which turned the Empire into a unity. To refuse to burn the pinch of incense and to say: `Caesar is Lord' was not an act against religion; it was an act of political disloyalty. That is why the Romans dealt with the utmost severity with anyone who would not say: `Caesar is Lord.' And Christians could never give the title Lord to anyone other than Jesus Christ. This was the centre of their creed. We must see how this Caesar-worship developed and how it was at its peak when Revelation was written. One basic fact must be noted. Caesar-worship was not imposed on the people from above. It arose from the people; it might even be said that it arose in spite of efforts by the early emperors to stop it, or at least to curb it. And it is to be noted that, of all the people in the Empire, only the Jews were exempt from it. Caesar-worship began as a spontaneous outburst of gratitude to Rome. The people of the provinces knew very well what they owed to Rome. Impartial Roman justice had taken the place of inconsistent and tyrannical oppression. Security had taken the place of insecurity.

• From White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (2016)

  Desertion to them was part of the daily resistance to upper-class rule. One story making the rounds pitted a Georgia sandhiller against a North Carolina Tar-heel. Asked what he had done with a quantity of pitch, the Carolinian claimed he had sold it to Jeff Davis. Caught off guard, the sandhiller said, “What did old Davis want with all that for?” “Why,” the Tar-heel jibed, “you Georgians run so that he had to buy some to make you stick.” 34 There is no way to know precisely how many men deserted. The official count from the U.S. provost marshal’s report was 103,400. This was out of a total of 750,000 to 850,000 men listed as in the army by the end of the war. But these numbers are only a small part of the story. Class divided soldiers in other ways. The Confederate army dragooned at least 120,000 conscripts. There were between 70,000 and 150,000 substitutes, mostly wretchedly poor men, and only 10 percent ever reported to camp. Another 80,000 volunteers reenlisted to avoid the draft. Finally, as many as 180,000 men were at best “reluctant rebels,” those who resisted joining until later in the war. Such resistance demonstrates that among average soldiers there was little evidence of a deep attachment to the Confederacy. 35 Shortages in food fueled more discontents. As early as 1861, when planters were urged to plant more corn and grain, few were willing to give up the white gold of cotton. Consequently, food shortages and escalating inflation led to massive suffering among poor farmers, urban laborers, women, and children. One Georgian confessed that “avarice and the menial subjects of King cotton” would bring down the Confederacy long before an invading army could. 36 More disturbing, though, the rich hoarded scarce supplies along with food. In 1862, mobs of angry women began raiding stores, storming warehouses and depots; these unexpected uprisings blanketed Georgia, with similar protests surfacing in the Carolinas. In Alabama, forty marauding women burned all the cotton in their path as they scavenged for food. A food riot broke out in the Confederate capital of Richmond in 1863. When President Davis tried to calm the women, an angry female protester threw a loaf of bread at him. 37 Female rioters were, in this way, the equivalent of male deserters. They shattered the illusion of Confederate unity and shared sacrifice. In 1863, in the wake of the Richmond riot, Vanity Fair exposed the persistence of deep class divisions among the southern population. The pro-Union magazine published a provocative image with the article, “Pity the Poor Rebels.” It described how poor men were arbitrarily rounded up as conscripts, while the desperately poor “white trash” of the Confederacy scratched the words “WE ARE STARVING” over the “dead wall” that separated the North and South.

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

  Holding fast. While I hesitated to share these “unbecoming stories,” they are real examples of what the “fight” response can look like in grief. They’re not pretty, but they’re also nothing to be ashamed of. Instead, they’re more examples of why it’s so important to understand the many shapes and sizes of our feelings and how they work together. THE UPSIDE AND DOWNSIDE OF ANGER Now that I got all that gunk out (phew!), let’s take a step back and get to know the so-called monster: anger. What it is, why we have it, why it isn’t all bad, and how we can respect and better channel it. Because here’s the sitch: You better believe that when your world falls apart, there’s a good chance that you’re going to be angry—and rightly so. But as I’ve learned, it’s better to care for our anger than to allow it to simmer, seethe, and spew. Anger is an instinctive response to a perceived threat, violation, or injustice. It isn’t a character defect to avoid. It’s a blinking red light telling us that something is not OK. Anger’s job is to protect us at all costs. It does that in obvious and not-so-obvious ways. We’re more familiar with the obvious ways—tick, tick, boom! It’s the covert stuff that can sideswipe us. For example, anger can shield us from feelings that feel way too big and scary to accept or tend to. Don’t worry , anger says. I got this . And while some folks are quick to anger, others may have a hard time even identifying that they’re angry at all. You’re likely familiar with those seemingly gentle creatures. Everyone knows they’re angry but them. Or no one knows they’re angry until they have either a heart attack or a playdate with an axe. Regardless of how anger manifests, it’s always trying to protect us—even from itself. Anger affects you physically, too. Your heart rate speeds up, you sweat, a surge of adrenaline blasts through your body, your face turns red, your jaw clenches—readying to defend. Then, once the real or perceived threat passes, there’s a physiological wind-down period. If you’ve ever been steaming mad, you know that it’s near impossible to chill out right away. It takes time to calm down all that powerful energy. In fact, it’s difficult to relax and restore our nervous systems after an angry episode. That’s because the adrenaline surge, and all that comes with it, can last for hours, even days, past the episode. And because all those chemicals remain pumped up in our bodies, wreaking havoc on our nervous systems, we’re more likely to experience continued anger. CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF So, we’ve clearly established that our anger is valid, important, and there for a reason.

• From Barclay's Guide to the New Testament (2008)

  And, all the time, there will be with them the power of that God who can keep them from falling and can bring them pure and joyful into his presence (verses 24-5). The Heretics Who were the heretics whom Jude blasts, what were their beliefs and what was their way of life? Jude never tells us. He was not a theologian but, as James Moffatt says, `a plain, honest leader of the church'. `He denounces rather than describes' the heresies he attacks. He does not seek to argue and to refute, for he writes as one `who knows when round indignation is more telling than argument'. But, from the letter itself, we can deduce three things about these heretics. (i) They were antinomians -people who believed that the moral law did not apply to them. Antinomians have existed in every age of the Church. They are people who pervert grace. Their position is that the law is dead and they are under grace. The prescriptions of the law may apply to other people, but they no longer apply to them. They can do absolutely what they like. Grace is supreme; it can forgive any sin; the greater the sin, the more the opportunities for grace to abound (Romans 6). The body is of no importance; what matters is the inward heart. All things belong to Christ, and, therefore, all things are theirs. And so, for them, there is nothing forbidden. So, Jude's heretics turn the grace of God into an excuse for flagrant immorality (verse 4); they even indulge in shameless unnatural conduct, as the people of Sodom did (verse 7). They defile the flesh and do not consider it to be a sin (verse 8). They allow their animal instincts to rule their lives (verse With their sensual ways, they are likely to wreck the Love Feasts of the Church (verse 12). It is by their own lusts that they direct their lives (verse i6). Modern Examples of the Ancient Heresy It is a curious and tragic fact of history that the Church has never been entirely free of this antinomianism; and it is natural that it has flourished most in the ages when the wonder of grace was being rediscovered. It appeared in the Ranters of the seventeenth century. The Ranters were pantheists and antinomians. A pantheist believes that God is everything; literally all things are Christ's, and Christ is the end of the law.