To write is to create something that will have its own life, Audre Lorde thought. A writer needs to hold her nerve, conquer her fears and speak out. Her great mantra – and the title of this Lorde reader, which collects for the first time in a single volume a selection of her poetry and essays – was: “Your silence will not protect you.”
It’s strange to think that Lorde would now be 84. (She was 58 when she died in November 1992.) Trying to imagine what she would have made of the world we live in today is not the least bit difficult. Her words are current and run alongside our lives. Her writing did not just have its own life, but now has an afterlife – though the term “afterlife” is not altogether satisfying when it comes to Lorde, because it immediately makes you think of death. To read her now is to feel accompanied through these strange and surreal political times.
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