Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

What are the motifs in Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde?

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One of the ideas that Audre Lorde was most criticized for by her feminist contemporaries is her tendency to identify rational thought as masculine and white and feelings as feminine and black. She was accused of trivializing the female perspective by making it seem "soft" or irrational. What she points out is that emotion is in fact just as valid as rationality. She argues that emotion and feeling are often unfairly dismissed in American/European/Western society. Thus, the objection made by other feminists that identifying femininity with emotion invalidates the female perspective is in fact evidence of their internalization of the skewed system of values inherent in white capitalist society. Lorde characterizes poetry as a means by which these two modes may be merged, as poetry is a method of translating nameless feelings into concrete ideas.