Poet Audre Lorde, 1983. (Photo by Jack Mitchell/Getty Images)
Legacy: Lorde and Daughtering in the Face of Death
Friday-Sunday March 30th-April 1st.
Friday 6pm-9pm Eastern
Saturday and Sunday Noon-3pm Eastern
“When I have been dead four and a half seasons, dry my words, seek the roots where they grow, down between the swelling of my bones…” —Audre Lorde in her personal diary for 1974, archived at Spelman College
“There is no guarantee that we or our movements will survive long enough to become safely historical…”- Barbara and Beverly Smith, Conditions Four, 1978
Audre Lorde mourned her parents in her writing. She mourned the relationships she longed for with them, that were never realized. She mourned them during their lives and after their deaths. And then she wrote about her own confrontations with death as a Black lesbian feminist cancer survivor, who survived until she did not. Almost 20 years before she died, she wrote the epigraph that appears above. Instructions for what to do four and a half seasons after her death. During her last interview “Above the Wind” she spoke of legacy. “This work began before I was born and it will continue…but my words will be there.”
This intensive is an opportunity to look at some of Audre Lorde’s published and archival writings and interviews for insight on legacy and daughtering in the face of death. This is for those of us who are grieving the deaths of people who we have daughtered, parents, mentors and other loved ones. This is for those of us who play unique roles in caring for the legacies of mentors and historical figures, archivists, literary executors, unlikely heirs. This is for those of us who are navigating terminal illness in our families and in our own bodies. This is for all of us, because daughtering is intimate work beyond binary gender and death shapes the urgency of our work to create another world.
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. When signing up please remember that this is what some people celebrate as Easter weekend. Yup. I know. Death, rebirth and all of that.
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 March 25th (that’s Toni Cade Bambara’s birthday by the way!)
This intensive is part of the M is for M/othering Ourselves Webinar Series, celebrating 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.