Sister Outsider

The fifteen essays and speeches in Audre Lorde's collection, dating from 1976 to 1984, draw on her many identities, among them Black woman, lesbian, mother, poet, feminist, activist and cancer survivor. Lorde confronts racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism and class, and argues for treating difference as a source of action and change instead of seeing human differences as simple opposites such as good and bad. Her subjects range from love and self-love to war, imperialism, police brutality, coalition building and violence against women, and she distinguishes the erotic from the pornographic. She also treats poetry as a form of knowledge. The title comes from a poem in her collection The Black Unicorn.

Emma Watson picked it for Our Shared Shelf, her book club.