Hello loved ones.

This is sister doctor Alexis Pauline Gumbs,

founder of the School of Our Lorde,

and this is week 3 of our 21 week

Resurrection Sunday series

in honour of the persistent, unstoppable, survival 
of the spirit of black lesbian poet warrior mother

Audre Lorde.

So this week, the poem that we're going to look at

is called The Brown Menace, or, 
Poem To The Survival of Roaches,

which was published in Audre Lorde's collections, 
New York City Headshop and Museum in 1974.

And this poem is amazing to me in many ways.

For me, it's one of the places where 
we see Audre Lorde talking about

survival on terms that go beyond 
the human species.

And...oh I have so much to say about this poem...

but... why don't you check it out for yourself?

"The Brown Menace,

or Poem To The Survival of Roaches.

Call me

your deepest urge

toward survival

call me

and my brothers and sisters

in the sharp smell of your refusal

call me

roach and presumptuous

nightmare on your white pillow

your itch to destroy

the indestructible

part of yourself.

Call me your own determination

in the most detestable shape
you can become

friend of your image
within me

I am you

in your most deeply cherished nightmare

scuttling through the painted cracks

you create to admit me

into your kitchens

into your fearful midnights

into your values at noon

into your most secret places

with hate

you learn to honor me

by imitation

as I alter -

through your greedy preoccupations

through your kitchen wars

and your poisonous refusal -

to survive.

To survive.

Survive."

So this poem is incredible, confrontational,

really takes on white supremacy's project

to exterminate people of colour, very specifically,
"The Brown Menace".

So right now in our contemporary society,

what immigration policy looks like,

what the war on drugs, 
i.e. the war on the poor, looks like,

is the same project of extermination,

and we can see it in, um, 1978,

Michel Foucault would talk about it in terms of
what's now called "biopolitics",

I wanna remind you all this poem came out in 1974,
<i>before</i> he coined that term.

<b>And</b>, this is an incredibly confrontational way

to say that when you seek to
marginalize a portion of your own species,

you seek to destroy the 
indestructible part of yourself;

you seek to not survive.

And at the same time,

this poem is amazing because it does
this deeply interpersonal work

of how that which we want to destroy
when we see it in other people

is really something we're working through
in ourselves.

By using the figure of the roach in this case,

Audre Lorde brings out that visceral feeling.

The roach being the "most detestable shape",

that most hated yet most resilient creature
that we think of or know about on this planet.

That species that will outlive us, no matter what
we do to ourselves on this planet.

And this poem itself has survived.

I see legacies of it in the performances 
of La Chica Boom,

who does Juan Cucaracha shows,

talking about what does it mean to take on 
that status of the most hated creature.

Cherrie Moraga shouted out this poem 
at this event in Oakland several years back,

and she talked about what it means to say
"call me roach",

really to take on in identification and solidarity,

that figure that is the most feared
by society.

So I love this poem for all of that.

And the assignment, the challenge for you,
should you choose to accept it,

is to think about that person 
who gives you that feeling.

A person who you are disgusted with.

It may be a person that you know 
in your community or your life;

it may be a political figure.

...For a long time it was Clarence Thomas.

And think about what is the lesson 
for your evolution,

that is tied to that feeling you have 
for that other person;

that other, other other, person,

who you would want to say is nothing like you,

but actually may - in your ability to see them - 
hold the key to an indestructible part of yourself

an evolution that you can demand from yourself

at this moment because you can see them.

That's your assignment.

And, I want to read one of the poems...

I worked with this poem 26 different times
for all the letters of the alphabet today,

and I wanted to dedicate to us, 
this Poem For The Letter S.

"S" is for Sunday and survival,
and here it is:

The Poem For The Letter S is

survival

survival

sisters sharp smell shape scuttling secret

survive

survive

survive.

So that is this week's Resurrection Sunday
ritual for us.

If you want to get in touch with me 
and find one of your alphabetized poems

to aid you, like a vitamin, as you seek to look at 
that indestructible part of yourself,

that you <i>don't</i> want to look at,

but that you're seeing in other people [ <i>LAUGHS</i> ]
who disgust you,

please hit me up,

you can check out the School of Our Lorde webpage

to find our how you can get involved.

And have such an amazing week!