Daughter Dreams:  Audre Lorde and the Darkness We Need Now

Tues January 30th to Thurs Feb 1

7pm-10pm Eastern Time

“mother I need your blackness now”

-Audre Lorde in “From the House of Yemanja”

Some say daughters are made of dreams. The unfulfilled dreams of mothers, the unspoken dreams of fathers. In capitalist patriarchy the word “daughter” carries with it obligation, unrewarded labor and generational anxieties that are gendered, racialized, and economic. But what if we can have an experience of daughtering that is NOT bound by patriarchal or binary gender? What if the nightdreams of those of us who are here daughtering escape the predictability of our days?

Audre Lorde documented her dreams and the dreams of her children.  She wrote of nightmares about her mother, police violence, and the academy in her poetry.  She assigned her poetry students to keep dream journals as a major source for the poem that would construct what she called “the skeleton architecture of our lives.”

This intensive is the place where daughter meets water.  Based on Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s essay “Daughter Dreams and the Teaching Life of Audre Lorde,” which activates Audre Lorde’s poetry, essays and journaled dreams to argue for a deep dark queer archive of mothering and daughtering, this online intensive will use writing, reflection, oracles and Black feminist theoretical and poetic praxis to connect each of us to our individual and collective archives of alternate possible lives and a transformed relationship to the complexity of daughter-work.

Tuition for this three day online intensive is sliding scale $125-275.   All possible payment plans are available. Just let me know.

This intensive is limited to 9 participants.

Reserve your spot with a $50 (non-refundable) deposit here: 

Send an email to brillianceremastered@gmail.com with your intentions (dreams) for the course by January 26th.

If you cannot attend the course and want access to a specialized bibliography of readings on this topic by Audre Lorde, APG and other Black feminist scholars (curated by APG) offer a donation of $25 or more with the note “daughter dreams bibliography” here:  

This is part of the M is for M/othering Ourselves Webinar Series, leading up to the release of M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs on March 9th 2018.  This webinar series offers a deep dive into the key concepts of Audre Lorde’s work as a queer regenerative resource.