Cher on Audre Lorde

“"Poetry of Heroism" was presented at "Sister Comrade: Celebrating the Lives of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker" on November 3, 2007, at the First Congregational Church in Oakland, California. Angela Davis, Judy Grahn, Jewelle Gomez, Holly Near, Linda Tillery, and Mary Watkins were among the presenters who gave memorial tribute to these foremothers of the lesbian-of-color movement.”

“In a uniquely distinct way, Audre Lorde's and Toni Cade Bambara's presence in Bridge also impacted ''Bridge'''s success. Audre and Toni were exemplary sister-writers, emblematic of that great surge of Black feminist writing spilling into our hands in 1970s and 80s. As "sisters of the yam"... they stood up in unwavering solidarity with the rest of us "sisters of the rice, sisters of the corn, sisters of the plantain" and that mattered. It helped put Bridge, coedited by two "unknown" Chicana writers, on the political-literary map. All in all, it was a brave moment in feminist history.”

“With its paradoxical title, Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde's most influential book of prose, is ever more trenchant twenty-three years after its first printing-surpassing even the reputation of her poetry, which is no minor feat...On the shelf with or at the bottom of that stack of other well-mined tomes-The Black Woman: An Anthology; Conditions: Five, The Black Women's Issue; Lesbian Fiction; Top Ranking-Sister is never far from me. I retain several dog-eared, underlined, coffee-splotched copies of her-at home, at work, on my nightstand-as necessary as my eyeglasses, my second sight... In one paragraph, Lorde can simultaneously blow away the entire Enlightenment project and use its tools, too. In 1990 I quoted myself in "Knowing the Danger and Going There Anyway," an article I wrote on Lorde for the Boston feminist newspaper, Sojourner; I'll change the sister trope and quote myself again: "I said that Audre Lorde's work is 'a neighbor I've grown up with, who can always be counted on for honest talk, to rescue me when I've forgotten the key to my own house, to go with me to a tenants' or town meeting, a community festival'."4 In 1990, Lorde was still walking among us. Sister Outsider has taken its creator's place as that good neighbor. And with this new edition, we will have our good neighbor and sister for another generation. May those of us who are Sister Outsider's old neighbors continue to be inspired by her luminous writing and may those new neighbors be newly inspired.”