The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself
What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, “for what do you not have words, yet?”]
What do you need to say? [List as many things as necessary]
“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?” [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.]
If we have been “socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition”, ask yourself: “What’s the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?”* [So, answer this today. And every day.]
Adapted from ‘The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,’ collected in The Cancer Journals.
*This question is borrowed from Naomi Wolf’s Commencement address at Scripp’s College, ‘A Woman’s Place.’