Landmark: Audre Lorde

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2019

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Poet Jackie Kay & performer Selina Thompson plus Jonathan Rollins and Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins the children of Audre Lorde discuss the influence of the US writer & civil rights activist whose work considers feminism, lesbianism, civil rights and black female identity. Shahidha Bari presents.

In her famous essay The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (1980), Lorde wrote:

"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

Lorde's writing includes poetry collections such as The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970) and The Black Unicorn (1978). Her Essays include Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) and Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. She also wrote Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) her novel chronicling her own childhood and sexuality.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches and The Black Unicorn are being reprinted in the UK this July.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps
0:21.2	it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream
0:26.1	van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, you. Yes, you with the inquiring mind and the artistic hair. Thank you for downloading
0:44.0	this podcast. We promise to keep you company as you trek the lonely path to work, laugh with you
0:50.2	as you loll in the bath and whisper sweet somethings into your ear as you drift into sleep.
0:56.1	I'm Shahid Abari and I think you and the Arts and Ideas podcast from BBC Radio 3 are just meant to be together.
1:04.1	Think of it as a love letter heading straight to your brain, delivered to you in just a moment after this.
1:11.4	Why does music move us? How does it do it? Well, if these are questions that have been
1:16.9	firing you up, I've got the very podcast for you. I'm Tom Service from BBC Radio 3 and from
1:23.6	Schubert symphonies to video game music, from how to start a piece of music and when to end it,
1:28.9	from background music to bird song, from Beethoven to Beyonce, from Bach to the future.
1:35.6	Thank you very much indeed. The Listing Service podcast is your guide to how music works,
1:41.1	and all kinds of music to the mastery and mechanics behind the magic.
1:46.2	Just search for the listening service on BBC Sounds and learn more about the music we all love.
1:53.7	Feminist, socialist, activist, lesbian, black, mother, teacher, novelist, essayist and poet.
2:04.3	Her name was Audrey Lord.
2:06.5	She loved lists because no single title seemed to capture the complex ways that she understood herself.
2:13.2	She wrote, she said, for those of us who live on the shoreline.
2:17.8	For those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice,
2:25.4	who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawn,
2:32.6	looking inward and outward at once before and after, seeking nows that can
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.