Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Lorde wrote this essay in 1983 after a visit to Grenada, about two months after the United States invaded the small Black island country. Her first visit to the country was about 11 months prior to the bloodless coup carried out by the New Jewel Movement. This coup ousted a corrupt, US-sanctioned government under the regime of Eric Gairy, and it established the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) of Grenada under Prime Minister Maurice Bishop (177). Lorde notes the improvements under the PRG, such as widened and reworked roads, a functioning bus service, and the overall thriving produce and people of Grenada (178).

The US then invaded the country in 1983, and the US government’s rationale does not hold up to Lorde’s scrutiny. She attributes white Americans’ acceptance of the Grenada invasion to the same racism that forms the fabric of American society. Furthermore, the invasion is yet another manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine that the US has used to justify the invasions of numerous Caribbean and Central American countries since 1823. Lorde suspects US involvement in Bishop’s assassination, and she notes the Pentagon’s calculated language to discredit Grenada’s revolutionaries and justify the invasion in the eyes of Americans—even Black Americans—who have accepted the media propaganda (179-86).