The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action

aper delivered at the Modern Language Association's "Lesbian and Literature Panel," Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977. First published in Sinister Wisdom 6 (1978) and The Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, San Francisco, 1980)
Intro: Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a black, lesbian, radical poet, civil-rights activist, and professor, who wrote and lectured (among other things) about the power of language, and the way power dynamics distort the relationships between men and women, blacks and whites, older people and young people.
In this paper, which she read in front of the Modern Language Association, Lorde is speaking about the difficulty and the necessity of “breaking the silence”—speaking truthfully about one’s own experiences and from one’s own perspective, even if this means clashing with social norms, which we all try to accept in order to feel included. This requires us to face the complicated ways power impacts our lives, even in ways we are not aware of.
Text 1:
I HAVE COME to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect. I am standing here as a Black lesbian poet, and the meaning of all that waits upon the fact that I am still alive, and might not have been. Less than two months ago I was told by two doctors, one female and one male, that I would have to have breast surgery, and that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that the tumor was malignant. Between that telling and the actual surgery, there was a three week period of the agony of an involuntary reorganization of my entire life. The surgery was completed, and the growth was benign. But within those three weeks, I was forced to look upon myself and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but much stronger. This is a situation faced by many women, by some of you here today. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of silence into language and action.