We Heal from Memory Sexton, Corde, Anzaldua, and the Poetry of Witness

Through an examination of the poetry of Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa, We Heal From Memory paints a vivid picture of how our culture carries a history of traumatic violence - child sexual abuse, the ownership and enforcement of women's sexuality under slavery, the transmission of violence through generations, and the destruction of non-white cultures and their histories through colonization. According to Cassie Premo Steele, the poetry of Sexton, Lorde, and Anzaldúa allows us to witness and to heal from such disparate traumatic events.

'My night mind saw such strange happenings': Anne Sexton and Childhood Sexual Trauma 'We are sisters and our survival is mutual': Audre Lorde and the Connections between Individual and Collective Trauma 'Una Herida Abierta': The Border as Wound in Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera 'This Kind of Hope': Anne Sexton and the Language of Survival 'My eyes are always hungry and remembering': Audre Lorde and the Poetry of Witness Healing from Awakened Dreams: Anzaldúa as Individual and Collective Witness 'I wish to enter her like a dream': Anne Sexton and the Prophecy of Healing Drawing Strength from Our Mothers: Tapping the Roots of Black Women's History Grinding the Bones to Create Anew: Gloria Anzaldúa's Mestiza Mythology

CASSIE PREMO STEELE teaches Comparative Literature at the University of South Carolina.