ABSTRACT
I begin my 16-week journey with 25 students in my Composition 1 class with the short but relentlessly insightful essay “The Transformation of Silence Into Language and Action,” by Audre Lorde. Most of my Brown, working-class, fatigued from care-giving, fatigued from transit, haven’t-been-in-an-English-class-in-at-least-10-years-and-are-therefore-quite-anxious students have never heard of the queer, Black, feminist poet and writer and are unprepared for the ferocity of her voice, or the searing message it carries. Many write that Lorde’s words wake them up in a way that words have never woken them before, that they challenge them to really think about the places in their lives that have broken them, and how they may have deepened the breakage through not speaking of it. Using the essay as inspiration, I ask students to write about a time in their life when they were afraid to speak, but did anyway. I have received pieces on telling bosses about coworkers’ theft of merchandise, the agony of living with and hiding past addictions, and far, far too many stories about childhood physical and sexual abuse—many times perpetrated by family members and loved ones.
