Six Queer Black Women Writers on Love, Identity and Resistance
In honour of this year’s Pride Month, we’ve complied this list of powerful quotes by six queer black women way-pavers in literature.
1.
“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
—Audre Lorde, “Learning From the 60s”, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
2.
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
—Alice Walker
3.
“May you study the pink of yourself. Know yourself riverine and coast. May you taste the fresh and the saltwater of yourself and know what only you can know. May you live in the mouth of the river, meeting place of the tides, may all blessings flow through you.”
—Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals
4.
“If you are free, you are not predictable and you are not controllable.”
—June Jordan
5.
“there may be those
who will crumble us
into paving for their own roads
listen: we musn’t let them”
—Samiya Bashir, “Per Aspera”
6.
“We love because it is the only true adventure.”
—Nikki Giovanni, “Love: Is a Human Condition”, The Women and the Men