Sharing the Illumination

Abstract

This chapter illustrates how Audre Lorde’s theories of difference emerged in reciprocal relation to her CUNY classrooms (including at City College, Lehman College, and John Jay College). It examines her pedagogies of difference: the methods she developed for teaching students about race, class, gender, and sexuality. It shows how—beginning at Tougaloo College, then at CUNY, and ultimately at the Free University of Berlin—Lorde made creative use of traditional methods like lectures and essays, while also developing interactive, student-centered assignments like daily journals, student-led discussions, creative projects, and the publication of student writing. In particular, it illustrates how she combined introspective assignments like journals with public projects to help students cultivate an activist consciousness: a sense of their own power to address the injustice they were studying. This chapter also shows how Lorde’s classrooms inspired several poems about teaching (including “Dear Toni,” “blackstudies,” and “The Bees”) and some of her most influential essays on difference.