phyllis young

nation, indivisible--or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others."

Economic inequality is now as severe as at any point since the movements that Moyers describes. With even our basic franchise increasingly threatened, taking to heart this chapter of US history is more important than ever. As with the other examples I've gathered, I hope it will stiffen our backbones and give us the strength to resist those who'd reduce our democracy to a mere instrument for private gain. As Moyers says, it's a story that should be told again and again, inspiring each new genera- tion of Americans.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Transformation of Silence

Audre Lorde ~

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. I am standing here as a black lesbian poet, and the meaning of all that waits upon the fact that I am still alive, and might not have been. Less than two months ago, I was told by my two doctors, one female and one male, that I would have to have breast surgery, and that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that the tumor was malignant. Between the telling and the actual surgery, there was a three-week period of the agony of and involuntary reor- ganization of my entire life. The surgery was completed, and the growth was benign.

But within those three weeks, I was forced to look upon myself and my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but much stronger. This is a situation faced by many women. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of silence into language and action. In be- coming forcibly and essentially aware of my own mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for in my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences.

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Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed would have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else's words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength.

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. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me to scrutinize the essentials of my living.

The women who sustained me through that period were black and white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual, and hetero- sexual, and we all shared a war against the tyrannies of silence. They all gave me a strength and concern without which I could not have survived intact. Within those weeks of acute fear came the knowledge-within the war we are all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or not-I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.

What are the words you do not have yet? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and at- tempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? Perhaps for some of you here today, I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am black, because I am myself, a black woman warrior poet doing my work, come to ask you, are you doing yours?

And, of course, I am afraid-you can hear it in my voice- because the transformation of silence into language and action

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is an act of self-revelation and that always seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, "tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside of you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth."

We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which im- mobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be

broken.

Excerpted from "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," originally presented at the Lesbian and Literature panel of the 1977 Modem Language Association meeting and printed in Can- cer Journals (Aunt Lute Press, 2006, www.auntlute.com). Lorde's other works include Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Crossing Press, 2007).