Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

In this interview, Lorde and Rich discuss Lorde’s experiences as a writer of poetry and prose and as an educator. Divided into three sections, the first section addresses Lorde’s understanding of the necessity of poetry in her life, the importance of nonverbal communication, and the realization of what words can do. In the second part, Lorde details her experience of teaching and its connection to writing. In the final section, Lorde discusses some of her prose and poetry.

Lorde’s life has involved the preservation of her perceptions, however unpleasant, and poetry has been a vehicle for communicating those perceptions and feelings (82). Because her mother taught her the importance of nonverbal communication, Lorde learned to gain vital information nonverbally to survive—but this created some difficulty in school because of the priority placed on verbal intelligence in education (83). Then, a pivotal moment in Cuernavaca, Mexico shifted her perspective because she realized that she “could infuse words directly with what [she] was feeling” (85). This experience prompted her first piece of prose.

Writing led Lorde into teaching because her first teaching experience was as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Her experience at Tougaloo taught her courage and that teaching is where the “real learning happens” (88).