A Litany for Survival is a work that calls out to those of us that were factored into the system as riddles, as bodies that were meant to be reconfigured, that were meant to be solved, and as people who were never meant to survive in this violent, White, capitalist state. Lorde writes, “For those of us/ who were imprinted with fear/ like a faint line in the center of our foreheads/ learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk/ for by this weapon/ this illusion of some safety to be found/ the heavy-footed hoped to silence us/ For all of us/ this instant and this triumph/ We were never meant to survive”, and communicates that as a marginalized body one must not believe in the illusion of comfort, nor of the luxury of safety, because neither exists for a non-conforming body that occupies a space beyond the walls of this White, capitalist society. Comfort implies that White supremacy would accommodate, and actively make room for, non White, cis-gendered, heterosexual, upper-class, thin, able-bodied, English speaking and well-educated bodies, which is an illusion because accommodating marginalized peoples does not perpetually feed the system.
Still, Lorde seeks to empower said bodies and challenges them to applaud themselves in their “triumph”, being that they survived their childhood, and they will continue to survive until they don’t. Fear and death’s significance shifts as Lorde communicates that we are human beings and if we choose to be silent, we die, and if we choose to speak, we die. She is challenging us to question what it is that we are most afraid of? The poem concludes with the lines, “So it is better to speak/ remembering/ we were never meant to survive” and being that Lorde’s poetry is timeless, these lines resonate with the violence and trauma that marginalized peoples are experiencing today. The global majority are awakening, and are outwardly choosing to sit in their power beyond the walls of the system. What does it mean to survive White America’s violence as people from communities that are Black and of color, fat, lower class, of immigrant status, and that have disabilities, that do not speak English, that are not college-educated, that identify within the infinite plots of the gender and sexuality spectrum, etc. all while holding self-compassion for yourself in your heart? We may be imprinted with fear when young, but it is because when our oppressors gaze upon our defiant bodies, they become fearful and they become harmful.