What Audre Lorde Knew About Self-Promotion That Most Culture Makers Don't

Why waiting for recognition is a luxury you can't afford—and what to do instead

Picture this: I’m handing you one of my favorite books. It’s my copy of Sister Love, a collection of letters between Audre Lorde and Pat Parker from 1974 to 1989.¹ It’s dog-eared, written all over, pages marked up with notes in the margins.

Now look at what I scrawled on the back cover: Self promotion, money and career, avoiding traps and treacherous people.

That’s what stood out to me most in these letters between two Black lesbian feminist poets who were building new language that, in turn, was shaping a movement. Not just the poetry, not just the activism, but the infrastructure work. The career building. The practical business of getting their ideas into the world.

Audre Lorde was a famous and established poet at that time. And what Audre Lorde did was send Pat Parker a letter explaining to her how to pitch feminist bookstores to do readings—which is what would sell books and build Parker’s career.

In addition to telling her how to do it, exactly what to say,— the literal elevator pitch— she sent her a photocopied package of all the feminist bookstores in the United States with notes beside them saying who to talk to, what to say, what the angle was.

Lorde also tucked cash into the envelopes whenever she sensed Parker was up against it financially. Cash sustains culture makers. So does strategic guidance about how to get your work into the world.

Think about what this means: Here are two poets committed to Black liberation, feminism, and lesbian visibility. They’re not selling widgets. They’re building a movement. They’re creating language for experiences that had been erased from the cultural record. They’re trying to reach Black women, queer women, women who’ve been told their stories don’t matter.

And Lorde understood that for those women to find Parker’s poetry, Parker needed to be strategic about distribution. The feminist bookstores were the infrastructure—the network of spaces where women who needed this work could discover it.

Self-promotion wasn’t too dirty or below Pat Parker and Audre Lorde as activists, feminists, and movement-oriented people. It wasn’t beneath them. It wasn’t at odds with their collectivist commitments. It was part of the job—perhaps one of the most important parts. Because ideas that stay invisible can’t create change.

That is part of the job as a culture maker. If you actually want your ideas to get out there and influence people, then you have to engage in the art of self-promotion. You have to learn how to advocate for yourself.

We need to encourage each other to do that—not be upset or push back when we see people promoting, not think it’s cheesy or cheap or that someone’s doing a little too much. And we need to challenge those voices in our own heads too. Sometimes you’re not even worrying about what your peers will say—you’ve got your own hangups about visibility, about taking up space, about whether you’re “too much.” Those internal scripts can be more restrictive than any external judgment.

I know. You just want to do your magical, transformational work. Writers want to write their next essay, their next chapter, their next book. Coaches want to be in session with clients. Teachers want to be in the classroom. Healers want to focus on the healing. Marketing feels like a distraction from the real work.

But here’s what Audre Lorde understood: If your brilliant work stays invisible, it doesn’t matter how transformational it is. The marketing isn’t separate from the work, it is part of your art—it’s what makes the work reach the people who need it.

Why Culture Makers Resist Self-Promotion (And Why That Resistance Keeps Ideas From Spreading)

Here’s the tension: Most of us who are drawn to culture-making work are communally oriented. We care about equality and change. We’re often motivated by values like justice, liberation, and collective wellbeing. Self-promotion feels individualistic, greedy, grasping. Or even worse—cheesy. (I kid, I kid. Sort of.)

But the resistance goes deeper than that, and it shows up differently depending on who you are and what you do:

Coaches and transformational practitioners worry that promoting themselves looks like they’re “not walking their talk” about humility and service. They think: “If I’m really good at what I do, clients will just find me through word of mouth. If I have to promote myself, doesn’t that mean my work isn’t good enough to speak for itself?” They’ve internalized the idea that promotion equals desperation.

Teachers and healers often believe their work is sacred and that putting a price on it—or worse, actively marketing it—commodifies something that should be freely given. They think: “Real healing happens through connection, not through marketing funnels. If I’m doing this for the right reasons, the universe will send me the people who need my work.” They confuse visibility with commercialization.

Artists and writers have been taught that real art is created for its own sake, that caring about audience is pandering, that promotion is what sellouts do. They think: “If I’m spending time on Instagram instead of on my craft, am I even a real artist anymore? Shouldn’t the work be enough?” They’ve absorbed the myth that authentic creativity requires poverty and obscurity.

Activists and organizers fear that building a personal platform will be seen as self-serving rather than movement-serving. They think: “Who am I to center myself when the cause is what matters? Won’t people think I’m using the movement to build my personal brand?” They’ve internalized the idea that leadership visibility equals ego.

Academics and researchers have been trained to believe that rigorous work eventually gets recognized through proper channels. They think: “If my research is solid, it will be cited. If my ideas matter, they’ll spread through academic networks. Marketing myself would compromise my credibility as a serious thinker.” They confuse promotion with a lack of intellectual rigor.

Entrepreneurs and consultants know they need to market themselves but feel uncomfortable with how much visibility is actually required. They think: “I posted about my offer twice this week—isn’t that enough? Won’t people get annoyed if I talk about my work more than that? I don’t want to be one of those pushy internet marketers.” They underestimate what “consistent promotion” actually means.

All of these concerns have something in common: They assume that promotion is separate from—or even opposed to—the integrity of the work itself. They treat visibility as a necessary evil rather than as a core function of culture making.

And there’s an unspoken hierarchy in activist and academic circles where the work is supposed to speak for itself. Where hustling for attention feels antithetical to the purity of the ideas. Where making yourself visible can be interpreted as ego rather than service.

I see this resistance constantly among the culture makers I work with—the recovering academics, the people who’ve left bad-fit organizations and institutions behind, the coaches and consultants who have sophisticated frameworks but hesitate to promote them consistently. They’ll create brilliant work, then feel uncomfortable about the sustained visibility required to make that work matter.

But this discomfort with self-promotion is itself a political problem. Because here’s what I’ve learned through years of studying how ideas actually spread: Ideas don’t spread through quality alone. They spread through systematic, sustained promotion by people who understand that visibility is part of the work, not separate from it.

This is what I explored in my essay on Mel Robbins’ thought-crystallization strategy: the 30/70 rule.² Most thought leaders spend 70% of their time creating and 30% promoting, then wonder why brilliant work goes nowhere. Robbins arguably does the opposite: 30% creation, 70% promotion. She’s spent over a decade promoting the 5 Second Rule and will probably spend another decade promoting the Let Them Theory.

Most people would call that repetitive. I call it strategic cultural saturation—the only thing that actually shifts contexts.

What Audre Lorde Understood About the Infrastructure of Ideas

Audre Lorde wasn’t just a poet. She was a culture maker who understood that beautiful words sitting in a drawer help no one. Her poetry needed to reach the women who would recognize themselves in it, be transformed by it, organize around it.

The feminist bookstore tour wasn’t a corruption of her poetry—it was how her poetry got into the hands of women who needed it. The detailed pitch instructions weren’t selling out—they were strategic distribution of ideas that could change lives.

This is the piece that gets missed in conversations about artistic or intellectual purity: Delivery infrastructure isn’t separate from the work. It’s how the work travels. It’s how ideas become movements.

When Lorde sent Pat Parker that package with every feminist bookstore contact in America, she was doing what I now call building d