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Audre Lorde Quotes about Children

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Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.

Audre Lorde
Children, Growing Up, White
Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.119, Crossing Press

From my membership in all of these groups I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities; and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.

Audre Lorde
Children, Color, Differences

Raising Black children-female and male-in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancy. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive.

Audre Lorde
Children, Suicidal, Dragons
Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.74, Crossing Press

If white American feminist theory need not deal with the differences between us, and the resulting difference in our oppressions, then how do you deal with the fact that the women who clean your houses and tend your children while you attend conferences on feminist theory are, for the most part, poor women and women of Color? What is the theory behind racist feminism?

Audre Lorde
Children, Color, White
Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children.

Audre Lorde
Children, Differences, Poetry
Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.106, Crossing Press

You loved people and you came to depend on their being there. but people died or changed or went away and it hurt too much. The only way to avoid that poin was not to love anyone, and not to let anyone get too close or too important. The secret of not being hurt like this again, I decided, was never depending on anyone, never needing, never loving.It is the last dream of children, to be forever untouched.

Audre Lorde
Dream, Hurt, Children

I learned to read from Mrs. Augusta Baker, the children's librarian. ... If that was the only good deed that lady ever did in her life, may she rest in peace. Because that deed saved my life, if not sooner, then later, when sometimes the only thing I had to hold on to was knowing I could read.

Audre Lorde
Rest In Peace, Children, Reading

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