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Stella Bolaki and Sabine Broeck (eds.), Audre Lorde's Transnational Legacies (Amherst and Boston : University of Massachusetts Press , 2015, $28.95). Pp. ix + 264. isbn 978 1 6253 4139 6 .
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The essays in Audre Lorde's Transnational Legacies that pay tribute to Audre Lorde are part of a "wider black feminist transnational archive" (ix). Underscoring the importance of writing one's body or one's self into visibility, coeditors Stella Bolaki and Sabine Broeck caution against oppositional forces as they remind us that "writing may become even more important when there is so much resistance to hearing what we have to say" (xii). As the title of the book intimates, Lorde's legacy and reach are transnational and transatlantic in scope. Furthermore, Audre Lorde's Transnational Legacies explores the profundity of Lorde's literary and activist accomplishments, the unparalleled influence she has had (and continues to have) on successive generations of feminists and on feminist writings. Establishing that previous scholarship about Lorde is more aligned with a national register, Bolaki and Broeck emphasize that this collection's primary goal is to archive the transnational dimensions of her legacy.1
Lorde's transnational activism becomes manifest in the contributors' wide-ranging expertise that includes artists, filmmakers, literary critics, theorists, translators, and publishers. Organized around three major themes - "Archives," "Connections," and "Work" - Audre Lorde's Transnational Legacies comprises reflections and shared memories with Lorde, rare interviews, discussion of two major films on the life and times of Lorde, musings on her travel narratives/memoirs, her...