2.8–Audre Lorde, “A Litany for Survival”

Link to Full Text

A Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde | Poetry Foundation

Author Bio:

Major Themes:

Fear: Lorde’s poem grapples with themes of fear and vulnerability. Central to the poem is the fear of speaking out and the potential consequences of expressing one’s true self. Lorde addresses the anxieties of marginalized people who worry about the risks of visibility and the repercussions of revealing their innermost thoughts and identities. The poem reflects on the tension between personal safety and the need for self-expression, highlighting the internal and external pressures that silence and constrain individuals. Through its evocative language and repetition, A Litany for Survival underscores the emotional cost of living in a society that often discourages authenticity and punishes dissent. Below are additional thoughts/avenues you might pursue regarding some of the piece’s major themes.

Title: (“L)itany”): In its traditional use, “litany” is a changed prayer from the Roman Catholic tradition, the most well know of which is the “Litany of Saints” chanted as a part of public worship services including the rosary, funerals, and the Easter Vigil.  If you are pursing this approach, it might be useful to pay attention to the recurrent phrase “we are afraid.” Could Lorde’s phrase function as a rhythmic match to the originating text’s recurrent phrase of “pray for us.” If so, what comes of replacing prayer with fear? Why most Lorde find the change in phrases useful?

Repetition of “us”/”we”:  Lorde makes repeated use of the terms “us” and “we,” including  one of the terms in both the opening and closing lines of the poem (“for those of us who live” in the opener and “we were never meant to survive” as the piece closes).  While there are many ways to interpret the words us/we, one thing that seems to go with any interpretation is the term(s)’ necessary relationship with their antithesis: “them.” As linguists including Ferdinand Saussure would remind us, humans attribute meaning to any term by separating that term from what it is not. If we apply such a paradigm to the terms “us” and “we,” what follows, it seems, is a dynamic of exclusion. We know what “us,” means, in other words, because we know who is not “us.” (For more on such Saussurean linguistics, see about two minutes into this video: Saussure in 6 mins – YouTube), especially the speaker’s statement that “signs are negatively defined”).

Critical Context:

Chandra, Frank. Sister Outsider and Audre Lorde in the Netherlands: On Transnational Queer Feminisms and Archival Methodological Practices. Feminist Review, vol. 121, no. 1, march 2019, pp. 9-23. DOI: 10.1177/0141778918818753.

Article Abstract:

This article takes direction from the transnational feminist lesbian encounter that took place between the Dutch collective Sister Outsider and Audre Lorde in the 1980s to reflect on the role of archives within transnational feminist research. Drawing on archival materials from the International Archive for the Women’s Movement (IAV) at Atria (Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History) in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States, I consider how fragmented archives offer stories on kinship, intimacy and loss. Taking into account the ‘absences’ and ‘presences’ (Lewis, 2017) produced in this archival research project, I propose an archival research methodology that is rooted in a practice of ‘orientation’ (Ahmed, 2006a, 2006b), ‘listening’ (Campt, 2017) and ‘intervention’ (Appadurai, 2003).

Peace, Kiguwa. “Training Anger with Accuracy: Audre Lorde’s Invitation to Black Women.” Feminist Formations, vol. 33, no. 3, 2021, pp. 199-223.

Article Abstract: The article engages the work of Audre Lorde on rage between Black women. Focusing on her 1984 essay “Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger,” the article explores destructive rage and Lorde’s concern about the effect of this rage on Black women’s capacity to build community together and feminist politics more broadly. Adopting an affective reading of Lorde’s analysis, the article dissects her attention to the affect of rage as interwoven with other affective registers that include hate and pain. Lorde’s insight and politics highlights a dimension of rage that is important to consider in contemporary Black women’s feminist politics and organizing—the capacity for rage to destroy sisterhood and authentic healing. Her project of attending to such rage as a means to render it less powerful in effect remains an urgent one for us today.

Bonus Content 1: Toni Morrison on Trauma, Survival, and Finding Meaning

Bonus Content 2: Angela Davis on Audre Lorde