by Suzanne Forbes-Vierling, PhD

I’ll never forget the day that one of my friends babysat my 9 year old daughter, Jasmine, for a few hours. I returned home to a hilarious sight: There was my German friend Jeannine looking up at me with a resigned look on her face and her waist-length hair slicked back with Ultra Sheen. My daughter had a big 'ole brush in her hand vigorously brushing the oil into my friends hair. My daughter looking up at my awe-struck face and said “Hi Momma!” as she continued brushing, braiding and oiling away.

Audre Lorde deemed herself a "black feminist lesbian mother poet." Years before Professor Kimberle Crenshaw coined the term "intersectionality," Lorde's poetry and prose embody the theory. Lorde uses her story of personal survival to reveal inconvenient truths about the marginalization of oppressed people.