A collection of fifteen essays written between 1976 and 1984 gives clear voice to Audre Lorde's literary and philosophical personae. These essays explore and illuminate the roots of Lorde's intellectual development and her deep-seated and longstanding concerns about ways of increasing empowerment among minority women writers and the absolute necessity to explicate the concept of difference—difference according to sex, race, and economic status. The title Sister Outsider finds its source in her poetry collection The Black Unicorn (1978). These poems and the essays in Sister Outsider stress Lorde's oft-stated theme of continuity, particularly of the geographical and intellectual link between Dahomey, Africa, and her emerging self.

Notes from a trip to Russia
Poetry is not a luxury
The transformation of silence into language and action
Scratching the surface : some notes on barriers to women and loving
Uses of the erotic : the erotic as power
Sexism : an American disease in blackface
An open letter to Mary Daly
Man child : a black lesbian feminist's response
An interview : Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich
The Master's tools will never dismantle the Master's house
Age, race, class, and sex : women redefining difference
The uses of anger : women responding to racism
Learning from the 60s
Eye to eye : black women, hatred, and anger
Grenada revisited : an interim report