Lovalerie King

Along with Lorde's Zami and works by a number of other black women, Sister Outsider underscored the wisdom of self-acceptance. I encountered Sister Outsider in the early 1990s when I was a 40-ish, part-time undergraduate re-entry student trying to create options that would change the direction of my life. Its overall message of self-affirmation and of locating power within marginalized spaces helped me to deal with the numerous challenges I would face in graduate school and in my path toward tenure.