The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action*
I’m baaaaack!
Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Happy almost MLK Jr. Day! I hope I covered all the holidays! As you can see I’ve been a little mia these past few weeks. That is because I was suffering from a phenomenon all writers and anyone who has ever had to write a paper suffer from: writer’s block. Whenever I get writer’s block I try to take a break and don’t think about writing for a while, but this block was stressing me out! Especially during a time when women around us are standing up and speaking their truth. How could I not write quality pieces in this time? I will let you know how I broke my writer's block, but first I have some thoughts.
The title for this piece is inspired by an essay Audre Lorde wrote, called The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action. She wrote it in the late 1970's and it was first published in 1980, but it's relevance is infinite. In this essay she speaks about how she, as a black lesbian, woman, and poet has found that it is imperative she say what matters to her most. How after a health scare, she realizes that death is finite and imminent and should she die, her silences would be the ones she regrets most. Here is an excerpt below,
"I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?"
I highly recommend everyone read this essay because it's powerful and personally makes me cry each time I read it. I revisited this essay on Monday night, the day after Oprah made her speech at the Golden Globes, in which she specified the importance of speaking your truth. The Me Too movement, which was started by black activist Tarana Burke in 2006 to highlight survivors of sexual assault and its pervasiveness in society, reached Hollywood this past year like fire. Women were telling their stories with such strength and turning patriarchy on its head. Women were confronting the brutally powerful men that have run our society for centuries. The truth changes lives, it makes you and I have to confront the world. Oprah expressed this and said what I've learned all my life from my mother and the women I've learned from.
"what I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have."
After hearing Oprah's speech and thinking of all the women who have spoken truth into power, including Recy Taylor who died ten days prior to Oprah's speech, I thought about Audre Lorde's essay. Death was inevitable and the most certain thing we have, so will we stay silent until then? Ms. Taylor did not, and even though the men who brutally raped her were never brought to justice, she still spoke. So I sat there in front of my computer, nursing a cold, and tried to create. Thought of all the black women who have given us their voices. I thought of Erica Garner who lost her life at a young age, and all the work she did to be heard.
What is it I haven't said? What are the tyrannies I swallow everyday? What is it, we are all afraid of? I found Ms. Lorde's essay on my computer (I have it saved, duh) and read it again, with tears filling my eyes. She said that transforming silence into language and action is scary, but of course that fear makes sense. It's worth it because speaking gives us the vulnerability to be visible in a way that helps us thrive.
"And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid."
Powerful, right? It's almost as if she wrote it today. As if she knows about the Me Too and TimesUp movement. As if she knows about the blacklivesmatter movement. It's almost like these problems we have now, existed for her as they do for us, because in a way these problems always existed. What are we going to do? Sit in our safe corners? I know I won't.
To bring you full circle, after reading the essay twice, watching Dr. Maya Angelou talk about how love liberates, and reading about the time Toni Morrison said that the most important job to have as a free person, is to free someone else; a shift occurred. I began writing and what I wrote was a reckoning. And after reading what I wrote, I was inspired to write this very piece you are reading now.
The action behind my language is this: the next few weeks my posts will be centered around black women's thoughts, experiences, and lives; that are not just limited to me. I will bring in black women to guest write, black women to tell me about their experiences, and I will try to highlight the black women who are doing the work. Stay tuned and I leave you with this,
"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect." -Audre Lorde
As usual, thank you for reading my work!
