“Until we find each other, we are alone”
The last line of Adrienne Rich’s poem “Hunger” dedicated to Audre Lord reads “Until we find each other, we are alone”. This powerful line grabbed my attention immediately and made me think of sisterhood and representation. There is a sense of aimless wandering many women of color experience within this lifetime that can often be connected to this feeling of being othered. We often find ourselves feeling isolated from larger social spaces due to the differences in our physicality’s that render us exotic, and the intersections of our oppressed identities. In navigating spaces where we forced to battle hypervisibility and invisibility many of women of color can often find themselves feeling a sense of detachment and beyond that they feel unwelcomed. So when I read “Until we find each other, we are alone” I know Rich is making a reference to the importance of sisterhood and representation. She dedicates the poem to Audre Lord, a black feminist, lesbian, poet, mother, and warrior. Audre Lord is an important figure to many black women because through her moving presence that can be found within her words many black women, including myself were able to not only connect with her words, but come to the realization that they are not alone. This is what Rich is delivering in the last stanza of the poem. The moment marginalized women connect with each other and create spaces where they are able to openly and freely be themselves unapologetically they will no longer carry the burden of lonesome for they can now look in the eyes of women who know and understand their struggles and feel a sense of solace. This is why her two uses of the word we contribute heavily to the understanding of why she’s speaking of representation through poetry. This passage is another constant reminder, like many I the novel of this idea of suffering due to oppression and the importance of solidarity. I think the author uses poetry as a means of artistic expression to put suffering women face in a language that will cause the audience to critically analyze the ways marginalized women grapple with suffering.