‘Sister Outsider’ by Audre Lorde

In the final episode of Human Conditions, Brent and Adam turn to Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, a collection of prose with exceptional relevance to contemporary grassroots politics. Like Du Bois, Césaire and Baraka, Lorde’s work defies genre: as she argues in this collection, ‘poetry is not a luxury’ but an essential tool for liberation. Throughout her work, Lorde sought to find and articulate new ways of living that encompassed her whole self – as a Black woman, poet, essayist, novelist, mother and lesbian. Brent and Adam discuss Lorde’s radical poetics and politics, and the case for poetry, anger, vulnerability, love and desire as the arsenal of revolution.

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Brent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.

Get in touch: [email protected]

Further reading and listening in the LRB:

Reni Eddo-Lodge & Sarah Shin: On Audre Lorde

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/at-the-bookshop/reni-eddo-lodge-and-sarah-shin-on-audre-lorde-your-silence-will-not-protect-you

Jesse McCarthy & Adam Shatz: Blind Spots

https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast/blind-spots

Sean Jacobs: Chop-Chop Spirit

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n09/sean-jacobs/chop-chop-spirit

Ange Mlinko: Waiting for the Poetry

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n14/ange-mlinko/waiting-for-the-poetry