Audre Lorde’s Anger and the Power it Holds

I spent a lot of time reading and rereading the Black Arts Movement poetry. I read them grouped by poet, grouped by gender, grouped loosely by age. I was trying to find ways that they were connected, things that were similar in many of the poems. To me, the thread that seemed to run through the majority of the poems was a pervasive feeling of anger. Honestly, that didn’t surprise me, as that anger is justified in the way that black men, and especially black women, have been treated in this country since they were first brought here, kidnapped and enslaved, in 1619. However, I wanted to examine this anger a little closer, because I’ve never found anger particularly useful unless it is used as some sort of catalyst for change. I don’t mean to imply that anyone doesn’t have the right to own their own feelings, and I’m not in any way saying that the anger I read in these poems was in any way wrong. Far from it! I just wanted to get another perspective on the power that this collective anger might contain, and how it could be used to spark change.

I searched for articles that might shed some light on the source of the collective anger, even though I have a very strong idea where it comes from and why it still burns to this day. There is a lot written by white writers about the Black Arts Movement, and even quite a bit of critical analysis that mentions the anger that I sensed so deeply. I didn’t want to read an analysis of Black anger by a white person, but I also recognize that I am not owed an explanation of a feeling by anyone in any category that lives their life in any layer or level of othered oppression. Still, I hoped. That’s when I stumbled upon “The Uses of Anger”, a speech given by the incomparable Audre Lorde for the keynote presentation of the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in 1981. This is a first person account of how anger is used in the Black Arts Movement by one of the masters of craft herself. Jackpot. And then some!

Lorde starts off with a word that sparks debate almost every time it gets brought into conversation – Racism. With a clear definition on the page, Lorde levels the playing field for everyone, giving a baseline for understanding and comprehension. Then Lorde goes straight to the heart of the matter by saying “Women respond to racism. My response to racism is anger”, and then lists the ways that she has lived with, on, around, and through that anger (278). As she does so, Lorde points out what it means to respond to racism with anger from points of exclusion, privilege, and even silence. In doing this, Lorde shows that anger can be used to spark change, including growth, but not through the use of guilt or by hiding behind defensiveness. I agree with the premise that Lorde shares that neither guilt nor defensiveness serve a purpose for advancement.

One of the things that Lorde does to take this one way conversation out of the realm of theory is to introduce actual examples of racism that she has encountered in her own life that sparked some of her anger. Reading through her examples is both disgusting and enraging because they illustrate on so many levels how pervasive racism is, yet how blind most white women are to their own complicity in upholding its foundations. It feels like this fact is partially responsible for the anger that Lorde feels bubbling just below the surface of her skin every day. As Lorde is speaking to a large group of women who are presumably invested in what she has to say, she has a level of freedom to express her outrage in real time to real people that is not always available when writing. She knows that they are listening, and maybe even hearing her.

Anger isn’t used to drive a wedge between Lorde and others, it is instead used as a way to unite the “others” in Lorde’s world into a coalition to fight against the very oppression that leads to the anger. This is done by Lorde’s use of the term “women/sisters of Color”, to which Lorde includes all women who are not white, including Asian, Hispanic, and Indigenous women. By making a point that each woman’s struggles with racism are going to be different but still valid, Lorde invites women of Color to learn from each other instead of fighting against each other. By inviting this open discussion wherein women acknowledge that the pain of others is as valid as their own pain, and that sometimes we are each responsible in some ways for the pain that other women are feeling, Lorde is encouraging an open discourse between women that is often actively discouraged. It is easier to hate someone for being different than it is to accept that you are an active participant in their pain. Calling women to stand together creates the opportunity for them to share their pain, but also share in their joint power.

It is the power in standing together inside of a shared anger that Lorde wants most. Why? I believe it is because Lorde knows deep in her bones that her own anger, the collective anger of women of Color who have been oppressed in some way for millennia, has the power to bring the change that she most wants to see in the world. That’s why Lorde has no use for guilt, her own or anyone else’s. Guilt avoids action, but anger births change (283). Taking this one step further, silent anger is useless but spoken anger breeds power. Lorde argues that being angry is not enough, we have to be willing to speak that anger out loud in order for the anger to be the catalyst for change this world so desperately needs.

This level of honesty often involves calling out our own complicity in different levels of oppression against other women. Lorde doesn’t shy away from this difficult task either. She readily admits that as a Lesbian Woman of Color, her children’s bellies are full because she has the privilege of working in a university. In naming her own privilege, she calls on herself to see the sameness between her and a woman that doesn’t have a job or a woman that doesn’t have children. This leads to what I think is the most powerful idea that Lorde puts forth in this speech and possibly even in all of her writing:

“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own. And I am not free as long as one person of Color remains chained. Nor is any one of you (emphasis mine)” (285).

This is the tie that binds us all together. Lorde not only names it, she includes every single woman as part of both the problem and the solution. Instead of pointing fingers and saying “You must do this for me to succeed,” Lorde takes a look around and also deep inside and realizes that while we are all connected in bondage, we are also all necessary for liberation. There is so much pain, but also beauty, in that idea.

I began this week feeling slightly battered by the anger that I found in the Black Arts Movement poetry. While I understood the anger, so much of it left me feeling my own anger, but in an unproductive way. After reading Lorde’s explanation of anger, I am feeling much different. Instead of frustration, I feel empowered. I think that’s the real power in Lorde’s writing. She uses her anger as a collective force to call all women in, to recognize their shared shackles but also to participate in their own liberation.

Audre Lorde is the very definition of empowerment.

Work Cited:

Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of Anger.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, vol. 25, no. 1/2, 1997, pp. 278–85. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40005441. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.