Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I feel, therefore I can be free.”

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

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  CBR Bingo: UnCannon Sister Outsider is a collection of essays and speeches by Audre Lorde, as well as including a couple travelogues from trips she took to Russia and Grenada. My formal education never included anything about or by Lorde, and so this is the first thing of hers that I’ve read. It was funny how many times I finished an essay and thought, “I bet this will be my favorite one in the book.” If you are willing to be open to what […]

Powerful Essays

The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master’s House by Audre Lorde

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Best for: People interested in some seriously good essays from a poet and activist. In a nutshell: This mini book contains five of Lorde’s essays / speeches on revolution and liberation. Worth quoting: “To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society.” “Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women.” “Can anyone here still afford to believe that the pursuit of liberation can be the sole and particular province of any one particular race, or […]

“I still had to learn that knowing was not enough.”

Zami by Audre Lorde

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I’m a bad feminist, because somehow I managed to reach my 30’s without ever having heard of Audre Lorde before. In a way, I’m also grateful for it, because I don’t think my brain could have really taken in her work a decade ago. If you have not read her work, don’t wait as long as I did. Lorde’s preferred method of expression is poetry and this is evident throughout the book. Every word feels deliberate, agonized over, in a way that might make the […]

Dismantle the master’s house.

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

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Audre Lorde had no equal, and I’m again disappointed that I never had to read her for any of my literary theory classes in college. She’s a talented writer and a brilliant thinker, well ahead of her time, and reading Sister Outsider was thought-provoking and a bit humbling (for she wrote about things we’re STILL dealing with today–we have so much work to do left). Because this is a collection, Lorde compiles these speeches and essays from a variety of experiences and occasions. Therefore, the […]

Took a “year” to read, but a lifetime for the poet to live

The Black Unicorn by Audre Lorde

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I was given The Black Unicorn: Poems by Audre Lorde a few years ago as a Cannonball book exchange gift. Like so many of my books, it was misplaced for a bit (I am not the most organized person to be frank), but recently found it hidden among other lost souls. I started reading this collection of poetry from 1978 (my edition revised in 1995) in 2020 and finished last night (January 3, 2021). Took a whole year! (Okay, year jokes over). Why did this […]

Against the Tyrannies of Silence

Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

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This collection of 15 essays and speeches examines oppression in many forms, from racism to sexism, heterosexism, colourism, or classism. Audre Lorde described herself as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” and thus was a target of many of the various isms; due to this, her thoughts on intersectionality are especially potent. Differences must be acknowledged because, for instance, “black feminism is not white feminism in blackface,” and I think that her observations on this issue are especially astute because through them she exposes some uncomfortable […]



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