The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, by Audrey Lorde.
Where I learned that Audre Lorde’s work is an investment that pays for itself over and over and over, especially if you are a Black woman. This (small) collection of 5 of some of her most famous essays is riveting and altering, and it is necessary. It’s simply necessary. A favorite of the year. She wrote this and pealed my wig RIGHT back: “For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men. But women have survived. As poets. And there are no new pains. We have felt them all already. We have hidden that fact in the same place where we have hidden our power. They surface in our dreams, and it is our dreams that point the way to freedom. They are made realizable through our poems that give us the strength and courage to see, to feel, to speak, and to dare.”