1. it began with Audre Lorde.
It began with Audre Lorde.
As I trace Lorde's now infamous remarks from audio tape (my transcription) to feminist periodicals and into the polished essay "The Master's Tools" in This Bridge Called My Back (1981) and Sister Outsider (1984 below), I realize she, while she made specific remarks about a few of the papers in the session, she was speaking more broadly about the sessions of the conference. However, I also realized, the in transforming remarks on a specific panel into a broader piece, Lorde took out Johnson and Bristow's names, along with all others.
As I followed her through the conferences of the late 1970s, I kept bumping into shadows.
Lorde, relegated to the role of “commentator" at the closing session “The Personal and the Political” of the 1979 conference The Second Sex Thirty Years Later delivered a stirring denunciation.
According to her biographer Alexis de Veaux, Lorde's remarks refered to "papers written by Linda Gordon, Camille Bristow, Bonnie Johnson, Manuela Fraire, and the conference coordinator, Jessica Benjamin — as embodying the limitations of the conference's scope.”
As I track the panelists I realized that Bonnie Johnson and Camille Bristow gave a paper "Both And" described as "reflections on being black feminists." Was Lorde criticizing them?
As I trace Lorde's now infamous remarks from audio tape (my transcription) to feminist periodicals and into the polished essay "The Master's Tools" in This Bridge Called My Back (1981) and Sister Outsider (1984 below), I realize she, while she made specific remarks about a few of the papers in the session, she was speaking more broadly about the sessions of the conference. However, I also realized, the in transforming remarks on a specific panel into a broader piece, Lorde took out Johnson and Bristow's names, along with all others.
I become curious about these women. Camille Bristow I identify easily, but Bonnie Johnson, with her not uncommon name, proves more difficult, a sister/outsider living in the footnotes of academic books.
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