Critical Noir: Daughters of Sister Outsider
By Mark Anthony Neal, AOL BlackVoices columnist
In 'Warrior Poet,' the recently published biography of Audre Lorde, author Masani Alexis De Veaux describes Lorde as "a living philosopher whose social consciousness was articulated through constant, intellectual shape shifting as she came to view herself as representative of multiple oppressed communities." Though Lorde first came to public consciousness as a poet during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, she is perhaps best known for her groundbreaking memoirs: 'The Cancer Journals,' 'Zami: A New Spelling of My Name' and her collection 'Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.' It was in her work as an activist and social critic that Lorde began to stridently pronounce herself a "black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet warrior" often to the dismay of those who thought that she was unnecessarily complicating her identity. But as De Veaux argues in 'Warrior Poet,' Lorde saw her own "identity and sexuality as fluid aspects of her transnational blackness." Lorde succumbed to breast cancer in 1992, after a 14-year battle with the disease, but her legacy continues in the work of her spiritual daughters: musician Meshell Ndgeocello and filmmaker Aishah Shahidah Simmons.
When Meshell Ndgeocello first came on the scene in 1993, with her debut 'Plantation Lullabies,' critics and audiences were hard pressed to describe her sound; many mistakenly referring to her as a hip-hop artist because of her spoken-word, singing delivery. But Ndgeocello set the record straight telling the now defunct One World magazine: "I don't even do hip-hop. We're just all some watered down derivative, you know...No one's striving to be Miles Davis. Everybody's striving to get paid. And, you know, I wanna be like Miles Davis."
When Ndegeocello joined forces with legendary pianist Herbie Hancock on 'Nocturnal Sunshine' (from 1994's 'Stolen Moments: Red Hot and Cool') and offered up: "With death you realize hatred is futile/sin a figment of our imagination/and compassion is often greater than God," it was clear that she wasn't just breaking down musical boundaries but committed to expanding notions of black identity in the age of HIV.
On subsequent recordings such as 'Peace Before Passion,' 'Bitter,' 'Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape,' and 'Comfort Women,' Ndgeocello has used her music to challenge homophobia, affirm same-sex unions, critique rampant materialism and to sing the spiritual praises of God-blessed ganja. Like Lorde, Ndegocello sees herself in a constant process of transformation. As she told Farai Chideya, "Revolution is a process of transforming oneself," adding "There was a time when artists were engaged...when their art was part of spreading that word, was part of creating a forum for discussions... Emerson's marketplace of ideas to a beat or on a canvas or on a stage. Now art is marginalized -- literally, limited to profit margins."
In her book 'Sister Outsider,' Audre Lorde tried to give voice to those who were brave enough to challenge the prevailing notions of gender and sexuality in many black communities and institutions. The year Lorde died, filmmaker and activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons founded AfroLez Productions with the intent of using film, literature and spoken word to combat racism, sexism, homophobia and classism in the lives of black women and girls. Simmons' goals have been most profoundly realized in the film 'NO!,' a feature length documentary that exposes the reality of rape and other forms of sexual violence in black communities. Simmons' work is in the very spirit that Lorde articulated in her classic essay 'Age, Race, Class, and Sex.' In the essay Lorde writes, "Exacerbated by racism and the pressures of powerlessness, violence against Black women and children often becomes a standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured."
Simmons is very clear about what she wants to achieve with 'NO!' She told Sable magazine, "I want rape and sexual assault/violence against women to be put on national agendas, the way racial profiling and police brutality are." As a rape survivor, the making of 'NO!' has also been part of Simmons' recovery but she has also been emboldened to speak about her own experience because of the "tyranny of silence" (as Lorde described it) around the issue of sexual violence in the black community. "I'm a survivor, my mother's a survivor" Simmons tells Afro Mama,. "So many women and girls are affected by this, why are we silent?" 'NO!' is ultimately one of the vehicles in which many of these women can tell their stories. Of the women who appear in the nearly completed documentary, Simmons describes them as heroes, "Because they're not just telling their story to me, but to everybody who watche[s] it."