"Among the constellation of Black women who have helped shape me, Audre Lorde shines brightly."
The desire to name and exalt a singular figure is one that stands in opposition to the emphasis on communal and collective learning and loving that animates Ghanaian culture. I’m not here through my own sheer will, though it’s certainly played a defining role in my survival; I’m here because others protected and fought for me, held me close and accountable, and helped me understand my own unique place in the world. At my best and brightest, I am a mirror of love’s brilliance.
Among the constellation of Black women who have helped shape me, Audre Lorde shines brightly. Her essays, writing and poetry, take pride of place on the altar of my bedside table, and her lessons and wisdom course through my mind and heart as I build what I hope transforms the world around me – for me and for others. When I was searching for ways to understand myself, Audre’s work offered me safe passage into the deep tunnels of Black lesbian desire. She kicked open doors to anger and guided me towards the vast and cleansing waters of myself.
She taught me to be unafraid as I navigated a white world and LGBTQ community that wanted me to go back to where I came from (I’m from Enfield, by the way). When I founded UK Black Pride in 2005, now Europe’s largest pride celebration for LGBTQ people of colour, leaders at London’s mainstream pride event at the time laughed in my face when I asked them for support. Their jeering increased as I spoke more publicly about the need for safe and brave spaces for LGBTQ communities of colour, but I was not deterred because I had Audre at my back, reminding me: “I have come to believe over and over again that what is important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood.”
My adoration and respect for Audre is reflective of my commitment to constant learning. Some knowledge is hard-earned, like the constant education of being a Black woman in the world, and some is offered more gently: kitchen table conversations with other women, beautiful books of poetry and biography, and corrections in our interpersonal interactions. But hard or gentle, our essential task is to translate our learning and knowledge into action. What do we do with what we learn? Audre’s work is only as powerful as what I make it mean in the world.
"Some knowledge is hard-earned, like the constant education of being a Black woman in the world, and some is offered more gently: kitchen table conversations with other women."
"Some knowledge is hard-earned, like the constant education of being a Black woman in the world, and some is offered more gently: kitchen table conversations with other women."
“One of the most basic Black survival skills,” Audre wrote, “is the ability to change, to metabolise experience, good or ill, into something that is useful, lasting, effective. Four hundred years of survival as an endangered species has taught most of us that if we intend to live, we had better become fast learners.” And this learning, a near constant experience for those of us committed to changing the world, has helped buttress me against naysayers and ennoble me to the communities I seek to impact. Here I stand, warts and all, committed to being an example. None of us gets it right all the time, but when the stakes are as high as they are for Black LGBTQ people, we must demand from ourselves and others evidence of our intentions.
The enduring lesson I’ve learned from Audre and the cavalcade of Black women who’ve guided and guarded me through life is one of solidarity. Solidarity requires unity, understanding and action. It demands that we put ourselves on the line, at risk of losing it all, to stand up for what’s right and necessary. It calls us to think about and organise around the varied and overlapping needs of groups of people who have come together to say, “This must be better for all of us”.
And as we continue to figure out, together and in deep solidarity, how we build a future worthy of the depth and breadth of LGBTQ communities, I remain convinced that it is our differences that make us so strong together and which will make the ultimate difference to the world. After all, as we’ve learned from Audre, “Unity implies the coming together of elements which are, to begin with, varied and diverse in their particular natures.” The Black women like Audre, queer and not, who have held me to high standards, with love and accountability – never asked me to be them; they demanded I be me. My place as one among many has always been affirmed and it’s my job to demand the same from those I’ve convened around me.
In the end, though, my most enduring lesson has been one of worth. Honouring a Black woman’s worth is what I’m proudest to have passed on to my daughter, who bounds through the world with a confidence so brilliant it’s almost blinding. The inherent worth of Black LGBTQ communities are what UK Black Pride has come to represent. And my belief in my own worth is what continues to steer me towards the future. If I am here because others believed in me, I owe it to them – and myself – to live in that truth.
