The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action

1
THE TRANSFORMATION OF SILENCE

INTO LANGUAGE AND ACTION
I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important
to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking prots me, beyond
any other effect. I am standing here as a Black lesbian poet, and the
meaning of all that waits upon the fact that I am still alive, and might
not have been. Less than two months ago I was told by two doctors,
one female and one male, that I would have to have breast surgery, and
that there was a 60 to 80 percent chance that the tumor was malignant.
Between that telling and the actual surgery, there was a three-week period of the agony of an involuntary reorganization of my entire life. The
surgery was completed, and the growth was benign.
But within those three weeks, I was forced to look upon myself and
my living with a harsh and urgent clarity that has left me still shaken but
much stronger. This is a situation faced by many women, by some of
you here today. Some of what I experienced during that time has helped
elucidate for me much of what I feel concerning the transformation of
silence into language and action.
In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of
what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light, and
what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?
Paper delivered at the Modern Language Associations Lesbian and Literature panel,
Chicago, Illinois, December 28, 1977. First published in Sinister Wisdom 6 (1978) and
The Cancer Journals (San Francisco, Calif.: Spinsters, Ink, 1980).
39
To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death.

But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will
either change or end. Death, on the other hand, is the nal silence. 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, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone
elses words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself
that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be
afraid, learning to put fear into perspective gave me great strength.
I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had
ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will
not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had
ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made
contact with other women while we examined the words to t a world in
which we all believed, bridging our differences. And it was the concern
and caring of all those women which gave me strength and enabled me
to scrutinize the essentials of my living.
The women who sustained me through that period were Black and
white, old and young, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual, and we all
shared a war against the tyrannies of silence. They all gave me a strength
and concern without which I could not have survived intact. Within
those weeks of acute fear came the knowledgewithin the war we are
all waging with the forces of death, subtle and otherwise, conscious or
notI am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior.
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 will 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 woman, because I am Black, because I am lesbian, because I am
myselfa Black woman warrior poet doing my workcome to ask you,
are you doing yours?
And of course I am afraid, because the transformation of silence
into language and action is an act of self-revelation, and that always
seems fraught with danger. But my daughter, when I told her of our topic
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From Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light
and my difculty with it, said, Tell them about how youre never really
a whole person if you remain silent, because theres always that one little
piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring
it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you dont
speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from
the inside.
In the cause of silence, each of us draws the face of her own fearfear
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. Within this country where racial difference creates a constant, if unspoken, distortion of vision, Black women
have on one hand always been highly visible, and so, on the other hand,
have been rendered invisible through the depersonalization of racism.
Even within the womens movement, we have had to ght, and still do,
for that very visibility which also renders us most vulnerable, our Blackness. For to survive in the mouth of this dragon we call america, we have
had to learn this rst and most vital lessonthat we were never meant
to survive. Not as human beings. And neither were most of you here
today, Black or not. And that visibility which makes us most vulnerable
is that which also is the source of our greatest strength. Because the machine will try to grind you into dust anyway, whether or not we speak.
We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and our selves
are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our
earth is poisoned; we can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we
will still be no less afraid.
In my house this year we are celebrating the feast of Kwanza, the
African-american festival of harvest which begins the day after Christmas
and lasts for seven days. There are seven principles of Kwanza, one for
each day. The rst principle is Umoja, which means unity, the decision
to strive for and maintain unity in self and community. The principle for
yesterday, the second day, was Kujichaguliaself-determinationthe
decision to dene ourselves, name ourselves, and speak for ourselves,
instead of being dened and spoken for by others. Today is the third
day of Kwanza, and the principle for today is Ujimacollective work
The Transformation of Silence
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and responsibilitythe decision to build and maintain ourselves and

our communities together and to recognize and solve our problems
together.
Each of us is here now because in one way or another we share
a commitment to language and to the power of language, and to the
reclaiming of that language which has been made to work against us.
In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally
necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function
in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that
transformation.
For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the
truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak
it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that are meaningful to us. But primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and
speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process
of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.
And it is never without fearof visibility, of the harsh light of scrutiny and perhaps judgment, of pain, of death. But we have lived through
all of those already, in silence, except death. And I remind myself all the
time now that if I were to have been born mute, or had maintained an
oath of silence my whole life long for safety, I would still have suffered,
and I would still die. It is very good for establishing perspective.
And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must
each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read
them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives.
That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been
imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own. For instance,
I cant possibly teach Black womens writingtheir experience is so different from mine. Yet how many years have you spent teaching Plato and
Shakespeare and Proust? Or another, Shes a white woman and what
could she possibly have to say to me? Or, Shes a lesbian, what would
my husband say, or my chairman? Or again, This woman writes of her
sons and I have no children. And all the other endless ways in which we
rob ourselves of ourselves and each other.
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From Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light
We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way
we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been
socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and
denition, and while we wait in silence for that nal luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.
The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt
to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for
it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so
many silences to be broken.
The Transformation of Silence
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The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action

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What is the author's perspective on silence?

What principles from Kwanza are discussed?

1

THE TRANSFORMATION OF SILENCE

To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death.

From Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light

The Transformation of Silence

and responsibilitythe decision to build and maintain ourselves and

From Sister Outsider and A Burst of Light

The Transformation of Silence

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