I love that Audre Lorde is getting attention today (Google is featuring her in a series of graphics at its search page). As a Black lesbian, she lived intersectionality in the very same way James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin lived it as Black gay men – spending time on two crosses, Bayard Rustin called it.
In a talk I gave some years back at an international religious studies conference, I said that, if I had my druthers, the canon of classic works people in seminaries read as part of their education would include people like Audre Lorde and not just Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas.
Many folks in the audience looked shocked, but I believed that then and believe it now. People doing pastoral ministry need to understand and appreciate lives different from their own, since, as Russian poet Konstantin Simonov said, “There is no such thing as foreign suffering.”
Related Off-site Links:
The Essential Audre Lorde – Charlotte Lieberman (Writing on Glass, February 13, 2021).
The Legacy of Audre Lorde – Roxane Gay (The Paris Review, September 17, 2020).
Google Doodle Celebrates Poet and Civil Rights Activist Audre Lorde’s 87th Birthday – Coral Murphy Marcos (USA Today, February 18, 2021).
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Making the Connections
• Remembering and Reclaiming a Wise, Spacious, and Holy Understanding of Homosexuality
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015 (Part I)
• “And Still We Rise!” – Mayday 2015 (Part II)
No comments:
Post a Comment