00:00:00.000If you want to support the Missing Witches project, you can do so by buying our book, reviewing it on Amazon and Goodreads, using offer code MISSINGWITCHES when you shop at Foxglove Farm, become a Patreon patron, or pick up some Missing Witches merch at TeePublic.1.00
00:00:17.220You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch.1.00
00:00:50.460Of her magic is most assuredly written
00:00:54.820Audrey has been on my Missing Witches to-do list pretty much from the jump.
00:00:58.680My first Twitter account still shows one of her quotes as my pinned tweet.
00:01:02.660I put a clip of her reading A Woman Speaks in an episode of our first season.
00:01:06.780But I kept putting Audrey's story on the back burner.
00:01:09.780I'll be honest, writing about Audrey scares me.
00:01:13.000Smarter people than me have written theses and diatribes on her work.
00:01:16.880The ultimate sister outsider who led a complex life from inside an even more complex identity.
00:01:23.520The ultimate sister outsider whose primary message was that we can look, act, think, be different, and still unified.
00:01:33.220The ultimate sister outsider who shouts in my ear that I am not free while any woman is unfree, even though her shackles are different than my own.
00:01:42.240How can I express here the debt of gratitude I owe to the person who taught me the lesson from that pinned tweet?
00:01:48.760If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me
00:01:54.520and eaten alive. I do not want to fuck this up. For me, for this coven, for Audrey.0.55
00:02:02.120My hope is to inspire our coven members who don't know Audrey Lorde to seek her out, read all her
00:02:07.380books, and fall in love. Pro tip, start with her collection of essays, Sister Outsider, Be Forever
00:02:13.400changed, and better prepared to change the world. The essays included bear such titles as
00:02:18.840Poetry is Not a Luxury, Uses of the Erotic, the Erotic is Power, Uses of Anger, and The Master's
00:02:28.480Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. Those of you who already adore and admire Audrey
00:02:34.900as much as I do, or know her better than I do, I'm still working through her catalogue. I hope
00:02:40.020you'll let me know how I can be of better service to her name if I fuck it up. So why now? Why choose
00:02:47.380the spring of 2021 to break my self-imposed silence? Well, it's because 2020 was fucking0.99
00:02:54.760crazy natch. But amidst the chaos, a new awareness, maybe even a new hope was brewing. A radical future0.97
00:03:03.320that we were envisioning together where access to healthcare matters, where social and economic0.99
00:03:09.380justice matter where black lives fucking matter? Now, a year later, we are left with what feels0.97
00:03:17.560sometimes like only paint flaking off one's proudly muraled streets. The cancellation of
00:03:24.120Aunt Jemima, a white supremacist population that was so freaked out by the riots that they doubled
00:03:29.680down on their own racism, despite the offending movement having already been co-opted by white
00:03:35.580people who were not listening. And it got me to thinking about Audrey and her words.
00:03:42.380I was brought or made very, very conscious of the ways in which black women and white women0.79
00:03:48.280do not hear each other. Angie Franklin, the founder of Afro Yoga, in her essay,
00:03:54.940Ghosted by Allies, Why Bi POC Still Can't Trust White People with Social Justice, wrote,0.95
00:04:00.040We all knew it was coming. I'd venture to say every single black person in America not only knew it was coming, but was actively waiting for it to happen.0.99
00:04:09.260After the Black Square badge of anti-racism, the allyship die-off was not surprising, nor was it a new experience for us.
00:04:16.900What was new was Black Lives Matter and social justice going viral.0.94
00:04:21.080All of a sudden, people gave a fuck about us, or acted like they did.0.95
00:04:24.720Because it was trending, and the perception of white people teetered on whether they showed public support for black lives.0.99
00:04:31.160Businesses scrambled to photograph black models to diversify their feeds and commercials.
00:04:36.800White people moved out of the way on the street to let us pass, and expressed their condolences.
00:04:41.880During this tumultuous time for black folks in America, it was as if we were supposed to relish in the fact that the whole world was expressing love for us.
00:04:50.040But the truth was, we knew it wouldn't last.
00:04:54.720So that's why we've gathered today to raise the voice of Audre Lorde, a black, lesbian, warrior, poet who never stopped speaking out, though she often felt that speaking to white women about racism was, quote, wasted energy because of destructive guilt and defensiveness.
00:05:11.280As the New York Times poll quote on the back of Sister Outsider, at least the edition I have, states,
00:05:18.140Lorde's work will be important to those truly interested in growing up sensitive, intelligent, and aware.
00:05:26.340If I had to choose a singular, necessary voice for these times, for this coven, it would be Audrey's,
00:05:32.960as she guides us to unlearn and work against our own destructive guilt and defensiveness.
00:08:44.660We speak not of human difference, but of human deviance.
00:08:49.800For Audrey, difference is not a barrier, but a creative resource
00:08:53.620with limitless potential that requires both our voices and our ears.
00:08:57.620our minds and souls in equal measure. Because again, Audrey didn't believe in the imposed
00:09:04.220binary of life. She saw no distinction between her poetry and her academic critical theory.
00:09:10.340Nancy K. Barano wrote in her introduction to Sister Outsider,
00:09:14.120we have been told that poetry expresses what we feel and theory states what we know.
00:09:18.880The white Western patriarchal ordering of things requires that we believe that there is an inherent
00:09:25.620conflict between what we feel and what we think, between poetry and theory. We are easier to
00:09:32.420control when one part of ourselves is split from another, fragmented, off-balance. There are other
00:09:39.360configurations, however, other ways of experiencing the world, though they are often difficult to name.
00:09:45.840We can sense them and seek their articulation, because it is the work of feminism, and I'll add
00:09:52.940here, witchcraft, to make connections, to heal unnecessary divisions. Sister Outsider is a reason1.00
00:10:02.380for hope. Audre Lorde's writing is an impulse toward wholeness. If I didn't define myself for
00:10:12.780myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. You know,
00:10:19.560we don't have control over a lot in this world. We are prisoners of our place and time, the skin
00:10:26.100we're in, bodies and families we did not choose, but there are things we get to choose. Our priorities
00:10:32.920beyond basic needs, how we conduct ourselves, the lens through which we observe the world, and how
00:10:37.980we act upon those observations. One of these choices is a more common struggle than most of us
00:10:44.300would like to believe. Whether it is nobler to define ourselves for ourselves, or be eaten alive,
00:10:51.840to feed the expectations of others. This is a decision that creeps into every moment of every
00:10:57.580day, whether we acknowledge it or not. How you present, how you behave, how you talk or don't
00:11:03.500talk. How you choose a lover or a job. Will you live who you are and be an outsider, or pretend
00:11:10.700to be what someone else wants you to be, slowly eaten away by the corrosive gastric acids inside
00:11:17.740the belly of society's beast. I was born working class and white in a white working class town.
00:11:24.300There was nothing about me that really stood out on a surface level, but like Audrey, I had a family
00:11:29.980and classmates that didn't understand me. I was weird, I am weird, anxious but creative.
00:11:36.780I learned very early that I had two options. Stand out and take the heat. Teasing. Insults. Threats. Popcorn landing in my hair from across the hall.
00:11:49.300Or I could blend in. Fade away. The real me. The weird, trans-aggressive me. Eaten alive and disappeared.
00:13:28.080Black History Month has almost always been about paying tribute to the history of black people in this country.
00:13:33.480A history that is full of pain, or stories, of extraordinary human beings
00:13:37.780whose contributions to the fabric of this nation are overlooked and ignored.
00:13:42.140Black trauma, or excellence. No in-between.0.99
00:13:45.180I hope all this listening and learning and feigned wokeness of last summer starts to pay off in tangible ways.
00:13:52.720This is the time for allies to prove they've actually been listening.
00:13:56.240It's their time to pick up the burden.0.98
00:13:58.380I hope this month is different not just because non-black people are promising to do better, but because they are actually following through.0.99
00:14:06.100There are many aspects to authenticity, dear Coven, and one is to practice what we preach.1.00
00:14:13.780Back up our hashtags with real listening, real learning, and real action.
00:15:09.180So, before we carry on with this Audre Lorde-inspired sermon on being yourself,
00:15:13.640let me just acknowledge that there are places where you can be killed, legally or illegally,
00:15:18.760or driven to suicidal thoughts for being yourself.0.99
00:15:22.120If that self is witchy, queer, slutty, loud, trans, or even just different.0.99
00:15:29.460If this applies to you, know that you owe your true self only to yourself.0.99
00:15:35.740It's okay to keep your secret safe until you can get to a place where you and your secret are safe.
00:15:43.140You can look for that place, whether it's a different country or a different coven.
00:15:48.880We know that growth lives outside of our comfort zones in taking chances and being vulnerable,
00:15:54.400but once again, safe from being killed? Important.
00:15:59.140Safe from people kind of looking at you funny on the street? Not as important.
00:16:04.980As Audrey wrote in her poem Coal, there are many kinds of open, how a diamond comes into a knot of flame, how a sound comes into a word, coloured by who pays what for speaking.
00:16:20.300Audrey reminds us that the price for speaking out is much higher for some than for others. For some, speaking out could mean death.
00:16:29.240So, because in this non-binary universe there are no either-ors, only ands, and because visibility1.00
00:16:37.780matters, sometimes we have to make sacrifices to make things easier for the next generation,1.00
00:16:43.320protecting them from future harm. We must paradoxically strive to be safe and brave.
00:16:51.360Audrey reminds us in her essay, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,
00:16:55.900I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken,
00:17:02.760made verbal, and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.
00:17:09.340Audrey's book Zami is what she calls a mythobiography, chronicling her early life,
00:17:14.240and I honestly should have just named this episode Go Read Everything You Can by Audrey Lorde,
00:28:11.880for the true nature of old female power.1.00
00:28:14.680So I wondered, why doesn't Mary deal with Afrikete as an example?0.64
00:28:17.980Why are her goddess images only white, western, European, Judeo-Christian?
00:28:25.980Where was Afrikete, Yemiah, Oyo, and Moelisa?
00:28:33.200Where were the warrior goddesses of Vodan, the Dahomian Amazons, and the warrior women of Dan?0.94
00:28:40.140Well, I thought, Mary has made a conscious decision to narrow her scope and deal only with the ecology of western European women.0.82
00:28:46.380Then I came to the first three chapters of your second passage, and it was obvious that you were dealing with non-European women, but only as victims and prayers upon each other.
00:28:56.960I began to feel my history and my mythic background distorted by the absence of any images of my foremothers in power.
00:29:03.920Your inclusion of African genital mutilation was an important and necessary piece in any consideration of female ecology, and too little has been written about it.
00:29:12.320To imply, however, that all women suffer the same oppression, simply because we are women, is to lose sight of the many varied tools of patriarchy.
00:29:21.380It is to ignore how those tools are used by women without awareness against each other.
00:29:26.840To dismiss our black foremothers may well be to dismiss where European women learned to love.
00:29:33.900As an African American woman in white patriarchy, I am used to having my archetypal experience distorted and trivialized.
00:29:41.120but it is terribly painful to feel it being done by a woman whose knowledge so much touches my own.
00:29:48.680When I speak of knowledge, as you know, I am speaking of that dark and true depth
00:29:52.700which understanding serves, waits upon, and makes accessible through language to ourselves and
00:29:59.320others. It is this depth within each of us that nurtures vision. What you excluded from gynecology
00:30:05.980dismissed my heritage and the heritage of all other non-European women and denied the real
00:30:10.740connections that exist between all of us. It is obvious that you have done a tremendous amount0.80
00:30:15.560of work for this book, but simply because so little material on non-white female power and
00:30:20.760symbol exists in white women's words from a radical feminist perspective, to exclude this
00:30:27.160aspect of connection from even comment in your work is to deny the fountain of non-European0.99
00:30:33.080female strength and power that nurtures each of our visions. It is to make a point by choice.
00:30:41.740Then, to realize that the only quotations from black women's words were the ones you used to introduce your chapter on African genital mutilation made me question why you needed to use them at all.
00:30:51.200For my part, I felt that you had in fact misused my words, utilized them only to testify against myself as a woman of color.
00:30:59.080So the question arises in my mind, Mary, do you ever really read the work of black women?
00:31:05.320Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you
00:31:09.680thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted
00:31:15.940connection between us? This is not a rhetorical question. Have you read my work and the work of
00:31:23.020other black women for what it could give you? Or did you hunt through only to find words that
00:31:27.740would legitimize your chapter on African genital mutilation in the eyes of other black women?
00:31:31.920And if so, then why not use our words to legitimize or illustrate the other places where we connect in our being and becoming?
00:31:41.340If, on the other hand, it was not black women you were attempting to reach, in what way did our words illustrate your point for white women?
00:31:48.800Mary, I ask that you be aware of how this serves the destructive forces of racism and separation between women.
00:31:55.100the assumption that the herstory and myth of white women is the legitimate and sole herstory
00:32:01.500and myth of all women is to call upon for power and background, and that non-white women in our
00:32:07.440herstories are noteworthy only as decorations or examples of female victimization. I ask that you
00:32:12.680be aware of the effect that this dismissal has upon the community of black women and other women
00:32:17.680of color, and how it devalues your own words. This dismissal does not essentially differ from
00:32:23.860From the specialized devaluations that make black women prey, for instance, to the murders
00:32:29.580even now happening in your own city.0.96
00:32:32.660When patriarchy dismisses us, it encourages our murders.1.00
00:32:37.300When radical lesbian feminist theory dismisses us, it encourages its own demise.
00:32:43.940This dismissal stands as a real roadblock to communication between us.
00:32:48.340This block makes it far easier to turn away from you completely than to attempt to understand
00:32:53.140the thinking behind your choices. Should the next step be war between us, or separation?
00:32:59.540Assimilation within a solely Western European herstory is not acceptable.
00:33:04.180Mary, I ask that you remember what is dark and ancient and divine within yourself that aids
00:33:10.940your speaking. As outsiders, we need each other for support and connection and all the other
00:33:17.360necessities of living on the borders. But in order to come together, we must recognize each other.
00:33:26.220Surely you know that for non-white women in this country, there is an 80% fatality rate from breast
00:33:31.800cancer, three times the number of unnecessary eventrations, hysterectomies, and sterilizations
00:33:38.080as for white women, three times as many chances of being raped, murdered, or assaulted as exist0.96
00:33:44.300for white women. These are statistical facts, not coincidences, nor paranoid fantasies.0.98
00:33:53.340Within the community of women, racism is a reality, force, in my life, as it is not in yours.
00:34:01.700The white women with hoods on in Ohio handing out KKK literature on the street may not like0.98
00:34:06.700what you have to say, but they will shoot me on sight. If you and I were to walk into a classroom0.99
00:34:13.340of women in dismal gulch Alabama where the only thing they know about each of us is that we were0.91
00:34:19.540both lesbian radical feminist? You would see exactly what I mean. The oppression of women0.80
00:34:26.420knows no ethnic nor racial boundaries true, but that does not mean it is identical within those
00:34:32.900differences, nor do the reservoirs of our ancient power know these boundaries. To deal with one0.64
00:34:40.140without even alluding to the other is to distort our commonality as well as our difference
00:34:46.380for then beyond sisterhood is still racism we first met at the mla panel the transformation
00:34:55.780of silence into language and action this letter attempts to break a silence which i had imposed
00:35:02.300upon myself shortly before that date i had decided never again to speak to white women about racism
00:35:08.980I felt it was wasted energy because of the destructive guilt and defensiveness,
00:35:15.000and because whatever I had to say might be better said by white women to one another,0.71
00:35:19.920at far less emotional cost to the speaker, and probably with better hearing.
00:35:26.580But I would like not to destroy you in my consciousness, nor to have to.
00:35:32.880So as a sister hag, I ask you to speak to my perceptions.
00:35:36.920Whether or not you do, Mary, again, I thank you for what I have learned from you.
00:37:21.360And I am the sun and moon and forever hungry.
00:37:26.860For me, since the Missing Witches book, available now, is structured around the wheel of the year,
00:37:34.660Audrey's poems Solstice and Equinox are of particular interest. Audrey describes her poem
00:37:40.640Solstice as a call to power. Our skins are empty. They have been vacated by spirits who are angered
00:37:48.000by our reluctance to feed them. Equinox. Today, both children came home from school talking about
00:37:55.720spring and peace. And I wonder if they will ever know it. I want to tell them we have no right to
00:38:02.560spring, because our sisters and brothers are burning, because every year the oil grows thicker,0.99
00:38:07.620and even the earth is crying, because black is beautiful but currently going out of style.
00:38:14.600That we must be very strong and love each other in order to go on living.
00:38:19.960Nature is real and tangible, the environment we live in, the topography of parks,
00:38:27.680windowsill gardens and forests, the movement of the earth and sun. But we witches also live
00:38:33.040inside the metaphor of nature, the solstice when we are decided, clear and full, the equinox when
00:38:39.780we are malleable and admire the transitional times. The spring equinox brings the promise
00:38:45.580of growth, but that growth depends on the seeds we plant. It is the same for farmers
00:38:51.120as it is for activists and poets. We must be very strong and love each other in order
00:38:57.880to go on living." Audrey was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and had a mastectomy.
00:39:04.960In her battle, she used her words, writing the cancer journals, and viewing her cancer
00:39:09.260as another difference on which she would not be silent or rendered invisible.
00:39:13.840Prosthesis offers the empty comfort of nobody will know the difference.
00:39:17.740But it is that very difference which I wish to affirm, because I have lived it, and survived it, and wish to share that strength with other women.
00:39:27.740If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge,
00:39:34.500then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other.
00:39:39.080Of all the thousands, literally thousands of memeable quotes I could have chosen for the
00:39:46.920title of this episode, I went with Moonmarked and Touched by Sun, because I feel like, in a way,
00:39:52.260it sums Audrey and us up. The moon and sun are individual celestial objects. The moon is an
00:39:59.580independent being, and yet what we perceive of it is largely dictated by the reflected light of the
00:40:05.240sun. We must look beyond what we are told to find the truth, knowing we are affected
00:40:11.360by both. Our existence relies equally on light and darkness, in all its beautiful difference.
00:40:20.860Where we are on the earth and in our lives dictates what and how we see. Audrey declared
00:40:28.020herself both the sun and moon. The sun and moon and we need not be identical to be unified in
00:40:38.460the dance of our reality. Here in the Missing Witch's Coven, I want us all to feel like we
00:40:44.680belong. Not because we are all the same, but because we appreciate and admire each other's
00:40:50.160differences. That here, if nowhere else, we are insiders, each bringing our own strengths
00:40:58.300and vulnerabilities, our powers, our variant and atypical strands, forming a web overlaid
00:41:06.400in delicate protection of our unity. That as you listen to my voice, Risa's and our guests' voices,