One of the most interesting readings I found for this week was Audrey Lorde’s selection of Sister Outsider. I discovered a particular voice that I did not seen in other authors so far. I just going to add some reasons why I enjoyed Lorde ideas and how she made me thought about our class.

First, I think that is definite important, as a theoretical critic, to determine where you are. When I read in the second paragraph “As forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself a part os some group defined as other, deviant, inferior, or just plain wrong”(854), she really caught my attention since she stands up on her enunciation place and, in first person, she talks about her experience as human being, intellectual and part of ‘other’ group. This is the first voice that is not placed in an omniscient narrator, the objective watcher, that usually we have in our readings, since the analysis has to be distant and non charged of emotions. In Lorde’s I found a voice. Of course, is related to the feminism, but it is really interesting that someone could propose an emotive and critic approach to theory.

Second,  when she explains what to analyze about the differences:

“Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation” (855).

If we notice, all colonial discourse, marxism, psychoanalysis… are built on difference. Societies are unequal, no matter what we do or what we think, and they are going to be unequal for hundred, thousand of years because human being is attached to difference.  If we think, even the academic world is nurture of this difference, since we have to criticize literature or culture and we compare and establish differences to get some point (actually, our writing assignments are based on this idea: determine the differences). But what I really found valid of Lorde’s point of view is the idea of “examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them”.  So, probably is not the difference that we are looking for, according to Lorde, but how are we misnaming them for not recognize them. I guess there is a complex idea about what it is difference and maybe in our future thesis and papers every one will discover what is the difference that is important for her/him.

On the same topic:

“You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reason they are dying” (857).

That really made think about Colombia, and in general Latin American societies. The huge gap between rich and poor is overwhelming. In the same city, in the same neighborhood, you see a tremendous building with sophisticated apartments, elevators and spectacular views, dwelled by executives and high class people, and a few blocks from there, you can see several persons who sleep on the street and do not have a meal. I think that kind of difference is also painful. Not recognize them, when I am studying abroad and I have access to education, it is unfair. Perhaps Lorde is pointing out that the differences maybe can help you out to understand who you are, what should you think about.

Finally, I think it is quite interesting that she talks about her experience as a writer. She notices that poetry was not a publishing material for some magazines and explains her experience as a novelist, including that is not only necessary “a room of one’s own” remembering Virginia Woolf’s book, but also that you need paper, a typewriter and time (855). And also, I think is quite important that this selected fragment includes one of her poems (maybe this was a decision taken by the editors), and that small portion of poetry evidences again that her creative and analytical writing are imbricated, they are not separable in her work. That made me think what the academy should have thought about her form and style. I believe, as a reader, that is valid to express yourself int his way if it is related to the topic, and if the think that you are talking about really touch you as an individual. However, is it valid for the academy world? Can I write a paper based on her model to analyze different topics? I open the question.