Audre Lorde Resurrection Sunday #8: Diaspora

Launched on Nov. 17th 2013 on the 21st anniversary of Audre Lorde’s transition from an embodied warrior healer to an ancestral force, this is a weekly series of videos documenting and sharing my process of clarifying survival through a re-immersion in the words of Audre Lorde. To see all the videos so far check out: summerofourlorde.wordpress.com/resurrection-sundays/

This week's poem is Diaspora and it celebrates and serves as meditation for my upcoming trip to Cuba! I am excited to be following in the footsteps of Audre Lorde who went to Cuba with a group of Black women writers in January 1985! To find out more about the trip and to support Witness for Peace (the sponsoring organization) check out my website: http://www.alexispauline.com/apgblog/cause-view/alexis-and-audre-in-cuba

I strongly believe in transnational connections between people of color living in different countries. That I know of this is the first people of color specific delegation to Cuba that Witness for Peace has sponsored, but with your support I know it will be the beginning of a meaningful and transformative practice of solidarity. How are you relating across water, wires, borders and boundaries? What type of country is "afraid" of you?

Every week as part of my practice of resurrecting Audre Lorde in my life and in our communities I will be making an alphabetical oracle from the weekly survival poem which will consist of up to 26 new poems based on the sacred source text. If you would like to receive a custom poem as a blessing for your journey you can with a donation of your choice to Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind’s School of Our Lorde! summerofourlorde.wordpress.com

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Captions courtesy of the Radical Access Mapping Project, Un-ceded Coast Salish Territories of the Skwxwú7mesh, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples.
To learn more, see: http://radicalaccessiblecommunities.wordpress.com/subtitled-videos/
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[ MUSIC... ]

Hello loved ones!

Welcome to week 8
of Audre Lorde Resurrection Sundays.

I'm Sister Doctor Lex.

I'm especially excited today because I am
getting ready to go to Cuba very soon,

and I am thinking so much about Audre Lorde,
who went to Cuba in January also, in 1985,

along with a lot of other brilliant Black women writers

like Alexis DeVeaux and Jayne Cortez,
and Mari Evans, and so many more.

So I am excited about this video because
I'm getting my energy up for that trip,

I'm really excited to participate
in a cultural exchange,

and I'm able to go with a delegation of
amazing people of colour who I love,

who I'm doing work with here in the united states,

and I'm very excited about how what we learn in Cuba
will influence the work we do together.

So this week I'm sharing with you
the poem "Diapora".

That we know of, and, um,
biographer Alexis DeVeaux also said

that we don't know of a place where Audre Lorde
wrote publicly about her experience in Cuba,

but this poem "Diapora" is about
her transnational work more generally,

and how she thought about the experiences
of people all over the world,

including folks in Lebanon,
including people in South Africa...

and I think that as I think about what it will mean
to engage with other Black folks in Cuba,

I want to have these words in mind.
So this is "Diaspora".

Afraid is a country with no exit visas

a wire of ants walking the horizon

embroiders our passports at birth

Johannesburg Alabama

a dark girl flees the cattle prods

skin hanging from her shredded nails

escapes into my nightmare

half an hour before the Shatila dawn

wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen

or a rickety midnight sleeper
out of White River Junction

Washington bound again

gulps carbon monoxide in a false bottomed truck

fording the Braceras Grande

or an up-country river

grenades held in a dry calabash

leaving

So for me that poem has to do with

what is at stake for people of colour to be
in solidarity with each other,

and all of that means in terms of
the conflicts that exist all around the world,

and especially the economic violence that is part
of systems of domination and globalization,

that people of colour face differently
in different places.

And I'm excited! Sometime soon, a chapter that I wrote about Audre Lorde's theories of solidarity,

especially in relationship to majority Black
spaces and nations in the world,

um, will be coming out in a book that's about
Audre Lorde's transnational impact.

So of course if you are following the
School of Our Lorde blog

you will know when you will have access to that.

And! I also wanted to make a somewhat self-serving
assignment to you,

in addition to thinking about your impact
on people of colour

in other countries than the country
that you may be situated in right now,

I would love it if you could make a donation
to Witness For Peace.

I'm so grateful to that organization for sponsoring this people of colour specific delegation to Cuba,

and I have information on the
School of Our Lorde site

and also on the Doctor Alexis Pauline Gumbs site

about how you can make a donation to that project.

I strongly hope that you will,

to support not just our trip

but also the practice, the continued practice

of people of colour delegations to be able to exchange in a particular specific and nuanced way

around the world.

Thank you so much for listening.

And...

happy Resurrection Sunday.