Audre Lorde was a self described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet”, according to her biography on the Poetry Foundation who spent her life confronting racism, sexism, and homophobia. Issues that are still relevant today today. After reading a few her many poems, short stories and novels I feel that even though I was not able to meet her in life, her literary works have left behind a crystal clear picture of the woman who wrote them. Audre Lorde accomplished many things in her life while pursuing justice for those who embody difference.
Lorde was born the third daughter to West Indian parents in Depression – era Harlem on February 18, 1934. According to biography.com, as a child she was nearly legally blind and the most headstrong of her sisters; she began writing poetry at the age of twelve. Audre was the first black student at Hunter High School, a public high school for intellectually gifted girls where she worked on the school newspaper and had her first poem published in the Seventeen Magazine in 1951, according to outhistory.com. While in high school Audre had various crushes on female peers and became more aware of racial differences. After high school, she attended Hunter College. After her father passed away in 1953, Lorde left for Mexico where she lived as an out lesbian among other leftist thinkers. As the website outhistory states, she returned to New York in 1954 with a new voice. Lorde graduated from Hunter College in 1959, and she then received her master’s degree in library science in 1961 from Colombia University, according to biography.com.
In 1962, Lorde married Edwin Rollins. Their marriage was troubled and filled affairs, however, they had two children between 1963 and 1964. During this time Lorde became more involved with the civil rights movement, and attended the March on Washington in 1963. According to the website outhistory, in 1968, she became the poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College where she developed a passion for teaching and inspiring a new generation of poets. While at Tougaloo, Audre Lorde fell in love with a woman names Frances Clayton. This relationship helped facilitate the end of her troubled marriage.
Shortly after this her first book of poety, The First Cities (1968), was published. In her second collection, Cable to Rage (1970), Lorde revealed that she was a lesbian, and with the release of her third collection, “From a Land Where Other People Live” (1973), her poetry became overtly political, as the poetry foundation website points out. Lorde’s earlier work was composed mostly of love stories but as she witnessed more civil unrest her work shifted towards political statements. As she became known in more feminist circles she came a feminist icon who was spoke internationally. In a 1977 speech, “The Transformation”, she brought attention to and criticized racism and homophobia in the feminist movement, from website out history. Audre Lorde also revealed that she has recently experienced a cancer scare, during which she found her strength in other women.
According to biography.com, in 1978, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. In her non-fiction work The Cancer Journals (1980) Lorde documents her battle with breast cancer. Audre Lorde refused to be victimized by the cancer, she considered herself and other women battling cancer warriors. The Journals also reveal her decision not to wear a prosthesis after her breast was removed. In her own words, “If we are to translate the silence surrounding breast cancer into language and action against this scourge, then the first step is that women with mastectomies must become visible.”
The cancer spread to her liver and Lorde passed November 1992 in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Her loss was mourned around the world and her ashes were scattered in the Caribbean, Germany, and the U.S. Lorde was honored in 1985 with the dedication of the Audre Lorde Women’s Poetry Center at Hunter College. She was also the recipient of the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit from 1991-93 and many other awards. (alp.org) She’s credited for helping to “establish the fight for gay rights as part of the greater fight against all oppressive forces that affect those who embody difference.” (outhistory.org)
In conclusion, Audre Lorde brought attention to racism, sexism, and homophobia and spoke of the importance of liberation among the oppressed her entire life. Audre Lorde accomplished many things in her life while pursuing justice. Throughout her works Lorde repeatedly suggests that differences in race or class must serve as a reason for celebration and growth, not as a reason for strife. In her book of poems Our Dead Behind Us, Audre says that “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”