Strong Women #8: Audre Lord

The Camel and the Scorpion is a book inspired by true events. It is the story of #StrongWomen - Caroline, Lydia, Anna - who spoke out for a good world despite the personal and professional risks to themselves in doing so.

This post is the eighth in my Strong Women Series. The series honors women and girls of courage.

Audre Lord. Credit: Mildred Thompson.

There's not much I can add about Audre Lorde than what she herself said, as depicted in Mildred Thompson's portrait of Ms. Lorde.

Black 
Lesbian 
Mother 
Warrior 
Poet. 
She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.


Ms. Lorde renamed herself twice. As a child, she dropped the 'y' from her birth name, Audrey, and went with Audre, which aligned more pleasingly with her surname Lorde. Later in life, Ms. Lorde chose another new name for herself, Gamba Adisa, which Ms. Lorde translated as "warrior: she who makes her meaning known."

"If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." The Cancer Journals.

“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain.” Black Women Writers, per Poetry Foundation.


As a woman born to immigrants, a woman of color, a lesbian, womanist, poet, activist, a human with cancer - coming up in the 1940s and 1950s - she needed to be strong to live her fullest life.


“Your silence will not protect you.” From Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

A ten-minute video below on Ms. Lorde's personal, creative, and activist life - which may be the same thing?

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

Ms. Lorde died young - only 58 - in 1992.

Women of courage like Audre Lord? They are who kept me writing The Camel and the Scorpion for 20 years, so I could share the stories of women like The Camel and the Scorpion protagonists, Caroline, Lydia, and Anna.

Honorable, imperfect, brave, vulnerable champions, all of them. Risking their personal and professional lives to stand up for their ideals.

Strong Women #7: Cecile Richards

The Camel and the Scorpion is a book inspired by true events. It is the story of #StrongWomen - Caroline, Lydia, Anna - who spoke out for a good world despite the personal and professional risks to themselves in doing so.

This post is the seventh in my Strong Women Series. The series honors women and girls of courage.

Cecile Richards. Source: Cosmopolitan.

Cecile Richards is my seventh #StrongWoman.


“Every bit of progress we have made in this country, perhaps in the world, has been because there were people willing to speak out even when it was unpopular.” 

Cecile Richards, Georgetown speech, April 2016

Ms. Richards is most well-known as Planned Parenthood's president, a position she's held since 2006, and which will end in May this year.  Ms. Richards' time with Planned Parenthood will close as a new endeavor opens: the publication of her forthcoming book, Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead — My Life Story.


But Ms. Richards' activist life emerged in childhood: At age 14, her school disciplined her for wearing a black armband to protest the Vietnam War. Well, one might say her activism began in the cradle, as Ms. Richards' parents were Ann Richards (former governor of Texas) and David Richards, a civil rights attorney.


As a human lightning rod for Planned Parenthood, an organization committed entirely to the reproductive health of women and men - to medical, economic, and social justice - Cecile Richards is the target of daily attacks from individuals, organizations, and political operatives. Ms. Richards' valor in withstanding these electric strikes and swirling storms so resolutely ... it astounds me.


Women of courage like Cecile Richards? They are who kept me writing The Camel and the Scorpion for 20 years, so I could share the stories of women like The Camel and the Scorpion protagonists, Caroline, Lydia, and Anna.

Honorable, imperfect, brave, vulnerable champions, all of them. Risking their personal and professional lives to stand up for their ideals.

Strong Women #6: Dolores Huerta

The Camel and the Scorpion is a book inspired by true events. It is the story of #StrongWomen - Caroline, Lydia, Anna - who spoke out for a good world despite the personal and professional risks to themselves in doing so.

This post is the sixth in my Strong Women Series. The series honors women and girls of courage.

Dolores Fernandez Huerta. Credit: Gage Skidmore

Never heard of Dolores Fernandez Huerta?

I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't heard of Ms. Huerta until I recently watched a movie about Cesar Chavez, and I thought: Who is that woman who stands by him as a fellow organizer? Why don't I know of her? She is astounding.

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, called Ms. Huerta "one of the greatest civil rights leaders in this country's history."

Dolores Huerta originated the phrase, "Sí, se puede" - "yes, it's possible" - which Barack Obama adapted for his "Yes, we can" motto.

With Cesar Chaves, Ms. Huerta founded the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farmworkers Association. It was Ms. Huerta who served as the union's contract negotiator with the growers, who eventually came to the bargaining table after years of grinding, bloody work by Ms. Huerta, Mr. Chavez, and the farmworkers.

But let's go back to a time before the creation of the National Farmworkers Association. 

Born in 1930, Ms. Huerta was a feminist from a young age, inspired by her mother, Alicia. Ms. Huerta's mother, after many years of saving, bought and ran a 70-room hotel in Stockton, California, that served low-wage workers in their agricultural community of Mexican, Filipino, African-American, Japanese and Chinese working families.  Alicia charged room rates that the workers could afford, frequently waiving the cost entirely.

After college graduation, Ms. Huerta became a teacher in Stockton, and this experience presented another inspiration that would shape her future as a world-changer: Some of her students came to school hungry and without even shoes to wear.

Involved in the Stockton Community Service Organization, Ms. Huerta learned and honed essential skills in community organization, advocacy, being the proverbial squeaky wheel, and surmounting obstacles from within and without a community.

Can you imagine the environment in the early 1950s, when Ms. Huerta came of age - a woman, a woman of color, a woman who championed low-wage workers - during the McCarthy Era, when all social- and economic-justice movements were branded as Communist?

However, about that time, organizing the farmworkers, Ms. Huerta said: "You had this ambiance around you that you could really change the world."

I invite you to watch this C-Span video narrated by Ms. Huerta about her life's work for economic and social justice.

And below, a half-hour Democracy Now segment on Ms. Huerta below, lauding the release of a film documentary on Ms. Huerta's life and work:

Women of courage like Dolores Huerta? They are who kept me writing The Camel and the Scorpion for 20 years, so I could share the stories of women like The Camel and the Scorpion protagonists, Caroline, Lydia, and Anna.

Honorable, imperfect, brave, vulnerable champions, all of them. Risking their personal and professional lives to stand up for their ideals.

Strong Women Series #5: Cris Williamson

The Camel and the Scorpion is a book inspired by true events. It is the story of #StrongWomen - Caroline, Lydia, Anna - who spoke out for a good world despite the personal and professional risks to themselves in doing so.

This post is the fifth in my Strong Women Series. The series honors women and girls of courage.

Cris Williamson. Source: Freight & Salvage.

Never heard of Cris Williamson?

A singer and songwriter, Ms. Williamson's album, "The Changer And The Changed, was the all-time best selling independent record from the early 70s until the early 90s - the same time period that King's Tapestry was the best selling record by a female solo artist." (Source: warr.org)


In an interview with the San Francisco Examiner, January 2015, Ms. Williamson said:
"We are given a voice at birth, we sort of open our beak like a little bird ... People go, 'Where did you get that voice?' And I think about it. I didn't get it anywhere. It pretty much came with the package. My thing was: ‘Now, what am I going to do with that gift?’"


So Cris Williamson had a remarkable voice, a gift as a songwriter, and the chutzpah to found several record labels over the years. But why is she one of my #StrongWomen heroines?

Again, from warr.org: ".... Williamson didn't get even 1% of the media attention of .... other artists, mostly because she was an out lesbian before Melissa Etheridge, Phranc, or even Martina Navratilova - she was the biggest lesbian star in an era when lesbianism had zero mainstream visibility."

In a 2009 interview with Berklee, Ms. Williamson answered a question about being a role model for young musicians who are lesbians. Ms. Williamson replied: " .... my approach to music is to speak as though we were all creatures who come to a water hole, in a clearing, in the wilderness. And everybody deserves the water, and the water to me is music. And that's what brings us all human beings together. And I think music should bring people together and not drag them apart."

Ms. Williamson answered the interviewer's question in the context of mentoring musicians, but this phrase within her response is what spoke to me of a vision, a source of courage:

....  we [are] all creatures who come to a water hole, in a clearing, in the wilderness. And everybody deserves the water ... 

If Ms. Williamson had concealed her sexual orientation and feminism, we might all know her as well as we know some of her contemporaries: Carole King, James Taylor, Carly Simon, and Joni Mitchell.

In choosing to come out as a lesbian and as a feminist in the 1970s, Ms. Williamson's musical voice gave heart to legions of girls and women who shrouded a part of their true selves in secrecy.

Women of courage like Cris Williamson? They are who kept me writing The Camel and the Scorpion for 20 years, so I could share the stories of women like The Camel and the Scorpion protagonists, Caroline, Lydia, and Anna.

Honorable, imperfect, brave, vulnerable champions, all of them. Risking their personal and professional lives to stand up for their ideals.