A Burst of Light and Other Essays

Table of Contents:
ForewordSadomasochism: Not About CondemnationI Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across SexualitiesApartheid U.S.A.Turning the Beat Around: Lesbian Parenting 1986A Burst of Light: Living With Cancer

Biographical Note:
A great American theorist of race, sexuality, gender, living, and dying, poet and activist Audre Lorde (1934-1992) created a body of work that was ahead of its time in its embrace of intersectionality. Her debut poetry collection, 1973's From a Land Where Other People Live, was nominated for the National Book Award and she was named New York State's Poet Laureate and received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. Other notable works include The Cancer Journals, her novel Zami, and the collection Sister Outsider. A member of the Black Arts Movement and a prominent advocate of the Afro-German identity during her years studying in Berlin, Lorde's writings have become increasingly influential since her death in 1992 of liver cancer.

Brief Description:
"First published in Family Pictures, Broadside Press, in 1970."

Jacket Description/Back:

"Lorde's words -- on race, cancer, intersectionality, parenthood, injustice -- burn with relevance 25 years after her death." -- O, The Oprah Magazine

"The self-described black feminist lesbian mother poet used a mixture of prose, theory, poetry, and experience to interrogate oppressions and uplift marginalized communities. She was one of the first black feminists to target heteronormativity, and to encourage black feminists to expand their understanding of erotic pleasure. She amplified anti-oppression, even as breast cancer ravaged her ailing body." -- Evette Dionne, Bustle Magazine

"Lorde's words -- on race, cancer, intersectionality, parenthood, injustice -- burn with relevance 25 years after her death." -- O, The Oprah Magazine

"The self-described black feminist lesbian mother poet used a mixture of prose, theory, poetry, and experience to interrogate oppressions and uplift marginalized communities. She was one of the first black feminists to target heteronormativity, and to encourage black feminists to expand their understanding of erotic pleasure. She amplified anti-oppression, even as breast cancer ravaged her ailing body." -- Evette Dionne, Bustle Magazine

"This was my first time reading Audre Lorde (finally!) and now I can't wait to devour everything she ever wrote. This was the kind of book that you end up highlighting so many great quotes, words you want to memorize, apply, breathe. Empowering read." -- Litsy