Eye to Eye: Black Women, Hatred, and Anger Summary and Analysis

This essay examines black women's anger and how it is expressed toward each other. Lorde begins by saying that all black women have an inner reserve of anger and that she has spent her life learning to express her own properly rather than suppress it. She has also noticed, however, that this anger seems most easily expressed toward other black women. She begins exploring this issue by noting that black women absorb the hatred of most of society from a young age, and even learn to feed off of it. She gives several examples of instances in which she gradually became aware of white people's hatred of her as a child. She often wondered as a result of feeling this hatred if something was wrong with her...