Exploring the roots of the “angry” Black woman, she stressed the importance of such intense emotions. Lorde’s analysis was especially raw when dissecting the relationships between women themselves – how white womanhood, for instance, was inherently different from black womanhood. She projected a powerful message about the importance and supremacy of women’s emotions and desires in a system that facilitates oppression through their repression. Here, I understood that breaking away from the system of oppression – the “Master’s House” – required a break from the metric of “good” womanhood, of “good” rebellion”, of “good” emotion. The “erotic” becomes something that is not exclusive to sex – rather, it is a state of emotional freedom. She portrays emotion as both a tool for empowerment and self-expression. The collection of essays explores her experiences as a “black, lesbian mother” and how these aspects of her identity intersect in the white patriarchy in a way that delegitimises black, female and lesbian experiences. Lorde, to me, solidified and justified the importance of what was beyond the empirical and numerical. It had seemed that academic writing centred around the rigid confines of rationality and stoicism, leaving little place for the genuine human experience, and for vulnerability. Reading Audre Lorde’s The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House was my first look into the world of personal essays. The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House
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