What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you . . . 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 a lesbian, because I am myself—a black woman warrior poet doing my work—come to ask you, are you doing yours?

Audre Lorde

“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”