My Weekend Pride Crush

I feel lucky that during my much younger years as I stumbled clumsily through the process of figuring myself out, I found Audre Lorde on my local library shelves. As a Gen Xer, my formative years weren’t spent online, but looking shit up in books. Yes, books. And on a trip to my library, amidst realizations that I did not like the boys like all the other girls did, I found Audre. Well, more accurately, she found me. Her writing remains as urgent and relevant as ever — particularly as books and libraries are now on the frontline against creeping christo-facism.

As the mother of intersectionality, Audre wrote extensively about the interplay of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age and ability — even before we had the specific word for it. Writer. Poet. Activist. Black. Feminist. Lesbian. Warrior. She knew that the white feminism was not enough, and would never bring about a truly equitable world. “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

We continue to relearn that lesson, over and over, as we hit walls and ceilings that refuse to be dismantled. We have seen the limitations of siloed thinking about race, gender, class, sexuality, identities, and all the other glorious differences that make up our messy humanity repeatedly. But when broken down to their basics, the issues we face so often are tied to the same old unjust systems — racism, sexism, capitalism (greed, baby, greed), ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia.

Pull one thread, and you see how they’ve been woven together over decades, centuries, millennia. Entrenched in this thinking is a pessimism about the ability to change. How can we fight these massive, unmoving systems? But that line of thought only ever benefits the co-called masters. Institutions built on patriarchy, racism, exploitation and consumerism like how things are going because it’s going well for them, and will fight with every tool at their expansive disposal to stop us. So instead patriarchy keeps patriarching. Billionaires keep billionairing. Corporations keep exploiting. Power keeps amassing.

Let us not be lulled into inaction by the enormity of the task, but instead energized by it. “Life is very short. What we have to do must be done in the now.” I carry with me the understanding that almost all of our issues are interconnected, and will take the combined work of all of us to dismantle.

And that starts by making sure the work of brilliant minds like Audre and so many others are not silenced. Ensuring that future generations can access the words and teachings that will expand their minds and refocuses their priorities is essential to change. That is, after all, what all the book banners and critical race theory haters and grad story time protestors are scared of. But there will always be more of us than of them, especially if we come together in fighting for a more just world, and we should remember that — always.

So thank you, Monroe County Public Library, for having Audre Lorde on your shelves. And thank you, Audre, for her eternal words, vision and fight. “I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” Happy Pride Weekend, all.