For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.
I do not want to be tolerated, or misnamed. I want to be recognized.
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I’ll be sending messages on a Ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side.
I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We’ve been taught that silence would save us, but it won’t.
I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.
There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.
It is not the destiny of Black America to repeat white America’s mistakes. But we will, if we mistake the trappings of success in a sick society for the signs of a meaningful life.
Art is not living. It is the use of living.
There is no Hierarchy of Oppressions.
Art is not living. It is a use of living. The artist has the ability to take that living and use it in a certain way, and produce art.
We are all in the process of becoming.
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.
When you reach out and touch other human beings, it doesn’t matter whether you call it therapy or teaching or poetry.
What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heel print upon another woman’s face?
Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.
What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence.
It’s a struggle but that’s why we exist, so that another generation of Lesbians of color will not have to invent themselves, or their history, all over again.
We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created.
Pain is important: how we evade it, how we succumb to it, how we deal with it, how we transcend it.