This is my first foray into Lorde’s writing as I don’t typically read poetry. That being said, Lorde’s writing is gorgeous, visceral, and still holds so much truth even close to 40 years after “Sister Outsider” was originally published. That’s really why I wanted to read this, to better understand and educate myself on racism and sexism in a way that I, as a white woman, don’t experience and don’t see the way that black women do, or lesbian POC would experience. I learned so much from this collection of essays and interviews, both about feminism and racism. It took me much longer to get through this relatively short book because I often had to sit with what I just read, to really digest it and hear what Lorde had to say, which is written with incredible passion. But it also took me awhile to finish because the organization of the different essays wasn’t well thought out, and the different essays got a little repetitive.

“Behind Every Great Man” has a great—pardon the pun—premise: highlighting the lives of extraordinary women whose lives and accomplishments have been forgotten in the shadow of their famous—or infamous—husbands. Forty women whose names have been forgotten, some while still alive, is documented in short 5-8 page chapters in a rather light and sometimes humorous manner. But for how perfect this books sounds, how desperately I wanted to praise these forgotten sister’s accomplishments, about 80% of the time, that wasn’t the case.