Oh my, so much time has passed since I began to reread Audre Lorde’s essays: those early musings on her birthday, followed by “Notes from a Trip to Russia”, “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”, and "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action". But, since then, I’ve found references
In the coming year, I don’t know if I will read so many collections or spend time with so many illustrations, but I have enjoyed my 2022 reading so far (partially discussed last week, here). Ai Qing’s Selected Poems (2021), translated by Robert Dorsett, are “characterized by his sincerity, a
Already it has turned too chilly to sit outdoors and read, unless the sun is shining, which it was not when I wanted to sit with Payback and Dancing Girls this week. But it’s still warm enough to be comfortable in a sweater to do the raking and burlapping (isn’t
My meandery re-reading of Audre Lorde’s essays began with musings on her birthday, followed by “Notes from a Trip to Russia” and “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. “Even if you’re new to Audre Lorde, you’ve probably seen this passage of hers quoted: “I was going to die, if not
This, her first essay in Sister Outsider, is based on edited journal entries from her travels in 1976, when she was invited to observe the African-Asian Writers conference, which was sponsored by the Union of Soviet Writers. She writes about her flight to Moscow, nine hours long, and her
