In her essay, “Apartheid U.S.A.” Lorde exhorts the African-American community to reach beyond continents and embrace the struggles of Black people everywhere:
“As African-Americans we must learn to use our power, to establish the connections instantly between consistent patterns of slaughter of Black children and youth in the roads of Sebokeng and Soweto in the name of law and order in Johannesburg. Our survivals are not separate, even though the terms under which we struggle differ. African-Americans are bound to the Black struggle in South Africa by politics as well as blood.”
In the same essay, Lorde also warned about the rise of the alt-right protected by law enforcement.
“In California, U.S.A., the Aryan Brotherhood, the Posse Commitatus, and other white and racist and anti-Semitic survivalist groups flourish rampant and poisonous, fertilized by a secretly sympathetic law enforcement team,” she writes.
Some have said that because of Lorde’s prophetic warnings she was ahead of her time. Sanchez disagrees.
“She was not ahead of her time on LGBT issues, xenophobia, on sexism, on racism, on rising Anti-Semitism, and unfettered corporate greed,” said Sanchez. “Sister Audre was on time. She was able to connect the dots of history to what we are living today.”
“Our survivals are not separate, even though the terms under which we struggle differ. African-Americans are bound to the Black struggle in South Africa by politics as well as blood.” – Audre Lorde
“A Burst of Light” was originally published in 1988, four years before Lorde lost a fierce battle with liver cancer. It was written around the time when she first learned that breast cancer, which she thought was cured, had in fact metastasized into her liver.
Included in the collection are excerpts from journals that Lorde kept during her first three years living with cancer.
“The struggle with cancer now informs all my days,” she writes in one entry, “but it is only another face of that continuing battle for self-determination and survival that Black women fight daily, often in triumph.”
In the journals, you encounter Lorde’s steely intellect. You also meet a mother, a spouse in a bi-racial relationship, and a brilliant, fierce, vulnerable, and committed writer and activist who is fighting for justice, while attempting to make sense of the disease that is ravaging her body, as well as the disease that is destroying Black and Brown lives all over the world.
“Battling racism, and battling heterosexism, and battling apartheid share the same urgency inside of me as battling cancer,” she writes in another journal entry.
Said Sanchez of Lorde: “She fought, she taught, she wrote.”
Lorde’s timeless prose in this collection provides contemporary social justice warriors the language, strategies, and lessons around resistance, through the power of intersectionality, a Pan-African vision, and ultimately — through the power of love and radical self-care.
Contained in this moving volume is an urgent call for readers to take stock at how we choose to live our lives. Lorde exhorts readers to “join together to affect a future the world has not yet conceived, let alone seen.”
“Sister Audre was a mighty voice,” said Sanchez. “She was a burst of light at a time when a lot of darkness was moving amongst us in this country. It’s amazing how relevant she is today.”
“A Burst of Light & Other Essays” is available in bookstores now.