[image description: a few lines from The Complete Poems of Sappho edited by Willis Barnstone with one line highlighted. The text is cut off on either side, but the highlighted line is “… calls Sappho ‘the delicious glory of the Lesbians.’”]
The worst kind of appropriation of Audre Lorde is taking place these days by folks who use her quotes (out of context) to serve their own anti-intersectional projects. As self-care has become a trending topic in social-justice circles, different venues have taken up Lorde’s famous saying on self-care without critically reflecting on how Lorde’s need for self-care stemmed from living and surviving under racist heteropatriarchy.
In conclusion, given the political unrest and impending threat to the civil rights of all marginalized people within the United States, I’m grateful that Gibson’s honesty, humor, integrity and passion have reached me in just the nick of time. I only wish that I had encountered them long ago, for there have been more personal, rather than political, times in my life when I could have used the strength and vulnerability of someone who “gets it” to keep me hanging on. Yet, what we have is today and a most pressing need for all of us to speak up and do something to make things safer, kinder, more equal and just. Please, I ask of you, let Gibson inspire and strengthen you the way they have inspired and strengthened me. We’ll do this together. We’ll hang in there with one another for as long as it takes.
There are literary influences whose work has a way of taking us back to a time when we were enlivened, emboldened and perpetually inspired. Then, there are those who nudge—or rather kick—our ass forward, encouraging us to seize the opportunity to wake up, give back and believe in something greater than that for which we, and the world around us, have settled. If we have stumbled upon this force…
Nelson is a wonderful writer, whose memoir/queer theory explosion The Argonauts was probably the best book I read last year. It got me interested in checking out some of her earlier work, The Red Parts and Jane, which are very different from The Argonauts, and from each other, but both exceptional books. I wasn’t sure about writing about these books here, because Nelson doesn’t address her…
Arisa White’s newest poetry collection, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, plumbs the depths of what it means to exist in the world as queer, female, a person of color, and beyond.
