I went in to this blog wanting to talk about Audre Lorde's description of the erotic, but I'll admit, I got a little sidetracked and instead went to look at her poetry and found an amazing poem that tied in my blog from last week and to her chapter titled "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action". I pasted it below for your reading pleasure:

Coal by Audre Lorde

I
is the total black, being spoken
from the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open
how a diamond comes into a knot of flame
how sound comes into a words, coloured
by who pays what for speaking.

Some words are open like a diamond
on glass windows
singing out within the crash of sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
in a perforated book—buy and sign and tear apart—
and come whatever will all chances
the stub remains
an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
breeding like adders. Other know sun
seeking like gypsies over my tongue
to explode through my lips
like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
bedevil me

Love is word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am Black because I come from the earth's inside
Now take my word for jewel in the open light.

Now, I realize there is only a loose connection between my previous blog (namely, the title of coal) and this poem, but what stood out to me more was the theme of words and what is being spoken. In the aforementioned chapter, what struck me as most powerful was her reasoning behind the pointlessness of silence. Essentially her point was that she was only hurting herself by staying silent--if she had, she would have been unable to communicate with those who helped propel her forward into a new life of understanding and acceptance. When she was dealing with cancer she realized that "death...is the final silence" (41). Her point there is that at some point (hopefully in the distant future), we will all die, and then the privilege of speaking will no longer be afforded to us. What we need to do now is take full advantage of our opportunity to speak while we can.

Further, I think that there's another inherent point within that. While she says that we all need to speak up more, even if we need to force ourselves out of our normal silent habit, some people are not able. The reason the feminist movement began was because women didn't have a voice. We had been socialized to believe that our rightful place was beneath men in every aspect of life. Women have had to, and continue to this day, to fight for the voice that didn't exist.

I think this shows a greater importance to what Audre Lorde is saying. So many people (both within the feminist movement, and any other movement) have been born without the privilege to speak. Therefore, to ignore that privilege, is to laugh in the faces of those who live in forced silence.