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.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
Research Article|
March 01 2023
Andaiye and Audre Lorde’s Black Transnational Sisterhood; or, “I Want You in This World”
Sasha Ann Panaram
Sasha Ann Panaram is assistant professor of English and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of African and African American Studies at Fordham University. She specializes in African American and Caribbean literature, with a particular interest in slavery studies. Her research has been published in The Black Scholar. Other public-facing scholarship has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Black Perspectives, Public Books, the Brooklyn Rail, and Left of Black.
Search for other works by this author on:
Small Axe (2023) 27 (1 (70)): 19–33.
Citation
Sasha Ann Panaram; Andaiye and Audre Lorde’s Black Transnational Sisterhood; or, “I Want You in This World”. Small Axe 1 March 2023; 27 (1 (70)): 19–33. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/07990537-10461785
Download citation file:
Advertisement
224
Views