Sister Outsider is collection of essays and speeches by Audre Lorde (1934 – 1992), the highly influential writer, speaker, and teacher, self-identified as a Black lesbian poet, and feminist. The thought-provoking quotes from Sister Outsider presented here bear witness to the depth of Lorde’s commitment to feminism and justice.
This posthumously published compilation features fifteen essential essays and speeches in which Lorde delves into sexism, racism, homophobia, and other oppressions. As demonstrated by the quotes from Sister Outsider that follow, Lorde provides a roadmap for social transformation that begins with change within the individual.
Though most of the essays in were written in the 1970s and 1980s, the struggles are all too much with us, making her writing and thinking as relevant as ever. Read More→
George Sand (1804 – 1876) was a French author known equally for challenging gender roles and her scandalous love life as for her vast literary output.
Sand managed to write some seventy novels, not to mention countless other works in other genres, including essays, plays, and journalism. All the while, she conducted innumerable love affairs.
Indiana (1832) Lélia (1833), Mauprat (1837), Consuelo (1843), and Le Meunier d’Angibault (1845) are among her best-known novels. Autobiographical works such as Elle et Lui, about her affair with Musset, were also part of her literary output. Read More→
From the 1988 Warner Books edition of Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler — Book 2 in the Xenogenesis Trilogy: “Human beings fear difference,” Lilith had told him once.
“Oankali crave difference. Humans persecute their different ones, yet they need to give themselves definition and status. Oankali seek difference and collect it.
They need it to keep themselves from stagnation. You’ll probably find both tendencies surfacing in your own behavior. When you feel a conflict, try to go the Oankali way. Embrace difference.” Read More→
Here are 5 classic women authors’ homes to visit in England — see where Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Beatrix Potter, Virginia Woolf, and Vita Sackville-West lived and worked. At right, Beatrix Potter in the doorway of Hill Top House.
For aficionados of classic women authors, there’s nothing like visiting the homes in which they lived and wrote. Fortunately, there are many such homes that are open to the public, keeping the spirit of these authors alive for present and future generations. Many hold public events, and most feature libraries and archives.
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Dorothy West (1907 – 1998) played a role in the cultural flourishing and experimentation of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. Here we present quotes on identity and experience by this quietly influential author best known for The Living is Easy (1948) and The Wedding (1995).
Dorothy West started writing as a child and while still in her teens, her work was praised and received awards.
Her writing is admired for its nuanced views of middle and upper middle-class African American communities and how it comments on gender, class, and social structure through storytelling. Read More→
George Sand’s first novel, Indiana (1832), argued for the freedom of young women to follow their hearts, make their own terrible mistakes, and learn from them in order to grow and be true to themselves. Only then could they become equal partners to their husbands.
Indiana is a young woman married to a much older man. She falls in love with a rake who has seduced her own maid. Indiana’s passion is nonetheless awakened by her perfidious lover.
The restrictive French marriage laws of the time and double standards of the time created a perilous path for Indiana’s passage to womanhood. Read More→
P.L. Travers (1899 – 1966) found inspiration for her writing as an avid reader of fairy tales and mythology. It’s no surprise, then, that she created the magical nanny, Mary Poppins (1934). Here’s a selection of quotes by P.L. Travers, a complicated woman and talented writer:
After the original Mary Poppins book (always the most successful), there were several sequels, and of course, the famous 1964 Disney musical film.
The original Mary Poppins books were darker and more subversive than the Disney-fied version. And the film Saving Mr. Banks, depicting the making of Mary Poppins, starred Emma Thompson as the prickly author who fought Disney on every detail. And that still didn’t tell the whole story of just what a curmudgeon Travers could be. Read More→
