Audre Lorde's Birthday Pasta

Audre Lorde was born on February 18, 1934 in New York City. For those who don't know: she was a Black lesbian feminist socialist warrior mother of two, as well as an incredible poet/writer. Her work has meant a lot to me. Thanks to A. for sending me a link to this Audre Lorde & Adrienne Rich marathon reading at the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Park Slope last November. I attended (and participated) for a few hours and had a wonderful, powerful time. Further thanks to A. for informing me earlier today that it's Lorde's birthday.

Still further thanks to A. for sharing with me a while ago this quotation from Harold Rosenberg's 1953 essay, "Revolution and the Idea of Beauty": "The most radical changes have come from personalities who were conservative and even conventional—a powerful recoil from the present threw them backwards, so to speak, into the future. The artist who concerns himself with angels or stained glass windows may produce effects as devastating as the designer of a new cosmos in plexiglass." From Rich's 1979 interview with Lorde: "I was working nights, and I'd apprenticed myself to a stained-glass window-maker…" I love small cosmic alignments!

I'll leave you with some words of Lorde's I don't think will ever stop resonating with me: "Rationality is not unnecessary. It serves the chaos of knowledge. It serves feeling. It serves to get from this place to that place. But if you don't honor those places, then the road is meaningless."

serves: 1-2
prep. time: 20 mins.

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 lb. pasta
1 mid-sized eggplant, peeled and cubed
1 massive portobello mushroom and its single attendant cremini mushroom, chopped
1/2 bundle of spinach
salt
coriander
paprika
oil
red wine vinegar

DIRECTIONS:
1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add pasta. Remove pasta when it's done.
2. Sauté eggplant in a large pan over medium-high heat. Turn down to medium or medium-low after several minutes.
3. Add mushroom. Season. Sprinkle red wine vinegar over the whole shebang.
4. Add spinach and cook till wilted.

I published a paper in the Journal for Critical Animal Studies. Not sure if I've plugged that already or not, so here goes: ‡†‡