Audre Lorde taught us that power begins with knowing and accepting ourselves.

In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.

We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.

Audre Lorde

The reading list for the contemporary poetry seminar during my first semester in the MA program at Iowa State was an interesting one. Elizabeth Bird, Louise Erdrich, Richard Wright, Charles Wright, Gary Snider, Carolyn Forché, plus a couple others I can’t recall right now. Also, the point of today’s story, Audre Lorde, a writer I had never heard of.

It was Fall of 1987 and it was a fascinating, albeit frustrating class. Read more