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Hello loved ones!

Welcome to week 8 
of Audre Lorde Resurrection Sundays.

I'm Sister Doctor Lex.

I'm especially excited today because I am 
getting ready to go to Cuba very soon,

and I am thinking so much about Audre Lorde,
who went to Cuba in January also, in 1985,

along with a lot of other brilliant Black women writers

like Alexis DeVeaux and Jayne Cortez,
and Mari Evans, and so many more.

So I am excited about this video because 
I'm getting my energy up for that trip,

I'm really excited to participate 
in a cultural exchange,

and I'm able to go with a delegation of 
amazing people of colour who I love,

who I'm doing work with here in the united states,

and I'm very excited about how what we learn in Cuba 
will influence the work we do together.

So this week I'm sharing with you 
the poem "Diapora".

That we know of, and, um, 
biographer Alexis DeVeaux also said

that we don't know of a place where Audre Lorde 
wrote publicly about her experience in Cuba,

but this poem "Diapora" is about 
her transnational work more generally,

and how she thought about the experiences 
of people all over the world,

including folks in Lebanon, 
including people in South Africa...

and I think that as I think about what it will mean 
to engage with other Black folks in Cuba,

I want to have these words in mind. 
So this is "Diaspora".

<i>Afraid is a country with no exit visas</i>

<i>a wire of ants walking the horizon</i>

<i>embroiders our passports at birth</i>

<i>Johannesburg Alabama</i>

<i>a dark girl flees the cattle prods</i>

<i>skin hanging from her shredded nails</i>

<i>escapes into my nightmare</i>

<i>half an hour before the Shatila dawn</i>

<i>wakes in the well of a borrowed Volkswagen</i>

<i>or a rickety midnight sleeper 
out of White River Junction</i>

<i>Washington bound again</i>

<i>gulps carbon monoxide in a false bottomed truck</i>

<i>fording the Braceras Grande</i>

<i>or an up-country river</i>

<i>grenades held in a dry calabash</i>

<i>leaving</i>

So for me that poem has to do with

what is at stake for people of colour to be 
in solidarity with each other,

and all of that means in terms of 
the conflicts that exist all around the world,

and especially the economic violence that is part 
of systems of domination and globalization,

that people of colour face differently
in different places.

And I'm excited! Sometime soon, a chapter that I wrote about Audre Lorde's theories of solidarity,

especially in relationship to majority Black 
spaces and nations in the world,

um, will be coming out in a book that's about 
Audre Lorde's transnational impact.

So of course if you are following the 
School of Our Lorde blog

you will know when you will have access to that.

And! I also wanted to make a somewhat self-serving 
assignment to you,

in addition to thinking about your impact 
on people of colour

in other countries than the country 
that you may be situated in right now,

I would love it if you could make a donation 
to Witness For Peace.

I'm so grateful to that organization for sponsoring this people of colour specific delegation to Cuba,

and I have information on the 
School of Our Lorde site

and also on the Doctor Alexis Pauline Gumbs site

about how you can make a donation to that project.

I strongly hope that you will,

to support not just our trip

but also the practice, the continued practice

of people of colour delegations to be able to exchange in a particular specific and nuanced way

around the world.

Thank you so much for listening.

And...

happy Resurrection Sunday.