Last month during the M/otherlands Intensive we gathered to examine how Audre Lorde’s navigation of solidarity across national lines as a Black woman accountable to Black women framed her personal and political decisions. We worked through the layers of our displacements, the many shadowed parts of our selves that show up in our longing to belong, in our vigilance for what has been lost, in the difference between the daughtering we do and the daughtering we dream could have been possible.
Today countless children are in the streets in the stark realization that their parents and the state have not evolved a structure to protect them, have not given them access to the peace that they deserve, the skills they need to love each other into growing up. Children of color and especially Black children who have been mobilized in the Movement for Black Lives are playing a crucial leadership role in the marches around the country. And Black and Brown children are risking more than anyone today to change our world.
Audre Lorde spoke out in Washington DC and many other places too. She returned to city where as a child she experienced the simple slap in the face discrimination of a segregated ice cream shop and spoke on the Washington Mall at the first March of Lesbians and Gays. And when she spoke she invoked “our children” in the collective sense, who would need our bravest action.
At the end of the intensive we grappled with the end of Lorde’s poem “On My Way Out I Passed Over You and the Verrazano Bridge” where she offers her vision of what we will make our bridges out of, noting that love is crucial but must be met by action. This poem is our intergenerational “lust for a working tomorrow” a future worthy of the brave souls all over the planet, screaming their names. (It is best activated aloud.)
P.S. We still have some spots for next weekend’s Legacy Intensive: Audre Lorde and Daughtering in the Face of Death. Sign up closes tomorrow.
Not Only (By Love)
by the participants in the M/otherlands Intensive
“encircled driven
not only by love
but by lust for a working tomorrow…”
-Audre Lorde “On My Way Out I Passed Over You and the Verrazano Bridge”
not only by love
but by spirit
not only by love
but by alchemy
not only by love
but by science
not only by love
but by hand
not only by love
but by play
not only by love
but by fight
not only by love
but by ancestral memory
not only by love
but by composted dreams
not only by love
but by breathing
not only by love
but by trees
not only by love
but by diving into mystery, spirit
not only by love
but by sitting with discomfort
not only by love
but by family
not only by love
but by history
not only by love
but by learning in community
not only by love
but by difference
not only by love
but by hunger
not only by love
but by sacrifice
not only by love
but by blood
not only by love
but by feeling the deep cut
not only by love
but by difficult conversations
not only by love
but by rigor
not only by love
but by the hard work of uncovering truth
not only by love
but by nuance
not only by love
but by duty to the truth
not only by love
but by remembering
not only by love
but by telling ALLLLL the family business
not only by love
but by forgiving
not only by love
but by walking through the fire
not only by love
but by protecting the water
not only by love
but by relationship with the land
not only by love
but by singing our prayers
not only by love
but by legacy
not only by love
but by vision
not only by love
but by distance
not only by love
but by memories
not only by love
but by heart
not only by love
but by translation
not only by love
but by decolonizing
not only by love
but by imagination
not only by love
but by tearing down what needs to go
not only by love
but by the cultivation of relationship
not only by love
but by sistering
not only by love
but by daughtering
not only by love
but by care
not only by love
but by protecting
not only by love
but by fire
not only by love
but by time
not only by love
but by home cooking
not only by love
but by cuddles
not only by love
but by sweating on the dance floor
not only by love
but by expanding and contracting
not only by love
but by resource sharing
not only by love
but by sleep
not only by love
but by breath
not only by love
but by daily poems
not only by love
but by telling and retelling
not only by love
but by bridges
not only by love
but by crossing
not only by love
but by reclamation
not only by love
but by letting go
not only by love
but by letting tired structures dissolve
not only by love
but by unbelonging
not only by love
but by mistakes
not only by love
but by humility
not only by love
but by reparation
not only by love
but by enough
not only by love
but by self-reflection
not only by love
but by healing
not only by love
but by growing
not only by love
but by intersection
not only by love
but by home
not only by love
but by ceremony
not only by love
but by practice