Greatest Strength and Power Is Speech

Audre Lorde is most famous for her vocal expressions of her thoughts and opinions and how she has inspired and persuaded countless others to do the same by putting aside their fears and doubts of unworthiness. Gaining power and self-confidence through speaking one’s mind should trump the concern of any potential fallout or misgivings. Regret is inevitable when you haven’t spoken the things that need to be said. By using rhetorical strategies through a personal story, Audre Lorde explains how important it is to push away the fear of confrontation and consequence in order to express one’s greatest strength and power; speech.

There is fear in the unknown; in this case, the unknown is the fear of misinterpretation or disagreement when you make yourself vulnerable and visible by choosing to show your inner mind workings to successfully communicate something that needs to be said. There is also the fear that voicing opinions could lead to a downfall. A fear that if the thing being said becomes distorted and mangled by passing from mouth to ear and back again, it will lose it’s meaning, it will lose itself; lost among the fast-talking, eager to attack, eager to destroy mouths of those who are small-minded and closed thinkers.

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There is so much fear in saying what needs to be said but when you put these things into perspective, it can seem inconceivable to keep the important thoughts bottled up.

“In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fear - fear of contempt, of censure, or some judgment, or recognition, of challenge, of annihilation.

But most of all, I think, we fear the visibility without which we cannot truly live,” (Lorde 42). Lorde was encouraged, one might say, into becoming outspoken by a life-threatening event wherein she wrote “The Cancer Journals.” “I was going to die, if not sooner than later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you,” (Lorde 41). “Death, on the other hand, is the final sentence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences,” (Lorde 41).

With these quotes and many others throughout “The Transformation,” Audre addresses the pathos side of her speech, wherein she explains how the emotions behind her identified disease led her to become an outspoken activist and public speaker. To say that this disease opened her eyes unto the fleeting days of life and/or the ignorance of the world, or rather the blatant disregard and lack of interest in small voices making informative and knowledgeable points is to say that she became infamous by sharing her own small voice with the world. What may have been a small voice amongst smaller and louder ones, grew throughout Lorde’s lifetime.

Audre inspired many to speak by sharing how and why she decided she, herself, needed to speak out and up. There was the small fear that led to Lorde shedding light on silences and the power held within; but mostly, she had a much larger inspiration once she explored her mind and the fear behind it and the way she held her thoughts in and how she could use them to push others in the right direction. Life threatening events are one way to nudge one’s voice out from the shadows, what with facing mortality and the briefness of living. Understanding the impacts that one’s silence might mean on your own children, your own peers, your own community, is another.

“We can sit in our corners, mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed…” (Lorde 42). Becoming a voice for those without, or for those hidden and unheard, Lorde shared her own. Concerned with the fainter voices of those too unafraid, too overseen, she spoke for them, to them, with them, helped to make them stronger and more powerful. Audre Lorde created and began a program called “Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa.” She celebrated and praised the differences of thoughts and opinions, not only as a black feminist but as a member of the LGBTQ minority.

This is where egos comes into play through Lorde’s speech and her way of expressing her point. “I am standing here as a Black lesbian poet...” (Lorde 40).“That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which we so often accept as our own,” (Lorde 43). She had an impact on speech not only in the United States, but the world, where she reached for higher, bigger goals than the less concerned before her. Logos is the lesser used of the three rhetorical strategies in Lorde’s speech, “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” but she also uses a small percentage of it in her piece, “The Cancer Journals.” Audre stresses both ethos and pathos especially in “The Transformation,” but also includes facts to make her argument stronger; “...that I would have to have breast surgery and that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that the tumor was malignant,” (Lorde 40). She uses her experience with cancer to create actions that speak louder than words.

Through denying a prosthesis after her surgery, Lorde wants to show others in a similar position that it is alright and okay to accept the changes from removal surgeries. “If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible to each other,” (The Cancer Journals i.e Audre Lorde biography). Racism through the use of logos is also a tactic used by Lorde. In “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” she writes “Black women have always on one hand, been highly visible, and so, on the other hand, have been rendered invisible through the depersonalization of racism,” (Lorde 42). This added opinion also acts as a fact by explaining the lack of ignorance concerning different races.

In conclusion, Audre Lorde knows how to work the audience, really get them hooked and interested with her writing, but also not lose their interest and she goes along. Lorde had a way with words that resonates with those who read her pieces; she is inspirational to many as well as relatable to others. Her powerful voice along with her powerful writing helps us to better understand where she’s coming from and why we should be considering and concerned with what she is talking about. Through the use of rhetorical devices and helping her meaning adhere to the minds around her, Audre Lorde shows us just how important it is to stand up for what you believe in, and to push away the fear that hold us all back from being stronger and more forthcoming with one another and the issues of today.