A self-proclaimed "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," Audre Lorde was born in Harlem in 1934 and went on to become an internationally recognized activist and artist. This quote, from an interview with literary critic Claudia Tate in 1982, demonstrates the authenticity with which Lorde interacted with the world. She went on to say: “We must key into those feelings and begin to extrapolate from them, examine them for new ways of understanding our experiences. This is how new visions begin, how we begin to posit a new future nourished by the past.” It is only by understanding our emotions that we can begin to formulate the change we wish to see in ourselves, and beyond.