Audre Lorde had a tremendous impact on my thinking when I read Sister Outsider over 30 years ago. She blew my mind open on issues of race, sexuality, class, capitalism, power, and oppression. This collection of essays, A Burst of Light, was just as powerful.
The book consists of five essays, the longest one is a diary of Lorde’s struggle with liver cancer, which had metastasized from an earlier bout of breast cancer years before. The first essay examines the power dynamics in BDSM, where Lorde asserts she is not condemning, but asking questions about submission/dominance and its connection to heteronormative structures of power, including echoes of other kinds of social dominance, such as racial power structures.
The second essay addresses Black women’s response to Black lesbians, particularly their fear of being labeled so themselves. Lorde digs into homophobia and shows how Black lesbians have been at the forefront of every liberation movement, emphasizing that the Black community is most powerful when they come together.
The third essay talks about South African apartheid and its parallels in American culture. The next essay is about lesbian parenting, the challenges and power for their families in a homophobic and racist society. Lorde had two children of her own, and talks about raising them with her partner Frances.
The largest part of the book is her journal entries about her fight with cancer: its terrors, its impact on her thoughts of mortality, her great passion to do the work she finds most meaningful in the face of her limits, and her determination to maintain control of her body and what’s done to it. One thing that was hard to read was her turning to homeopathic remedies over medical ones, particularly her faith in mistletoe injections she receives. On one hand, she is completely right to determine what happens to her body herself, even if it means resisting surgical intervention and other treatments. On the other, my personal beliefs about the way “woo” health can harm people dealing with medical issues, made me feel confused about Lorde’s blindness in this one area. I will note that while she even resists labeling her tumors cancer for a period of time, her time spent at a health clinic in Switzerland helps her accept the reality to some extent.
Audre Lorde was a warrior in every respect, and her life was cut way too short. As I read A Burst of Light, I was reminded time and again to readjust my views, and see more deeply into the societal and racial issues that seem discouragingly the same from Lorde’s time to our own. I also reflected a lot on my own “work in the world” and how I make my own life a life worth living.
