Andaiye and Audre Lorde’s Black Transnational Sisterhood; or, “I Want You in This World”

So many Black revolutionaries lived with and died from cancer. How did they make sense of their vulnerability when confronted with this illness? How did they balance fighting for the world and for themselves? When modern medicine could neither ameliorate their pain nor eliminate the disease, to whom did they turn for support? This essay centers letters from 1989 to 1990 that Andaiye sent to Audre Lorde shortly after they met at the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action conference in 1988. Drawing on these letters, a tribute titled “Sister Survivor” that Andaiye wrote for Lorde following her death, a copy of A Burst of Light that Lorde sent to Andaiye, and Black feminist scholarship on how listening constitutes care work, the author explores what Andaiye and Lorde taught each other about the possibilities for living with cancer and listening across differences.