I Feel, Therefore I Can Be Free

I officially have been inspired by Audre Lorde.

I'm currently reading Sister Outsider which is a compilation of essays she has written and speeches she has given over the years. I think her writing is just beyond eloquent and I wish I could write like she does. She has some very powerful messages that she gets across beautifully in her writing and I bow down to her for that.

I've read some of her stuff before, but for some reason it is resonating more with me now. Lorde is not your typical writer for she is "a black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two children, including one boy, and a member of an interracial couple" and all of these things that make her who she is come out in her writing.

What I loved most of her writing in particular is her essay Poetry is Not a Luxury for she says some beautifully thought out things like:

"The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The black mother within each of us - the poet - whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free."


"The brain alone will set us free"


"Women have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. Those dreams are made realizable through our poems that give us strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare"

I highly recommend this book. It will give you a whole new insight into the ways of the world and how people who may not be like you can still feel the same things you do and still want to change the same things you do. If anything, it may just free your mind. :D