About Audre

Audre Lorde, a self proclaimed feminist, lesbian , mother and poet wrote poems and speeches crying out against inequalities between blacks and whites as well as men and women. Her passion for reform stemmed from her need for freedom. Lorde was quoting as saying, “I feel I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain,” (Kulii).

Lorde was born the youngest of three sisters to West Indies immigrants, Linda Gertrude Belmar and Frederic Byron Lorde on February 18, 1924. Her first poem was a love poem, a rebellion against her parents in the eighth grade. It was later published in “Seventeen” magazine (Trapasso). After graduating in 1954, from Hunter High School where she was the editor of the school's literary arts magazine she continued on to Hunter College; spending her first year at the National University of Mexico. A year spend confirming and renewing herself and her identity both personally and artistically, it was here that she proclaimed herself as a lesbian and poet (Kulii). Returning to New York Lorde studied Library Science and worked to put herself through school by working in odd jobs such as a factory worker, ghost writer, social worker, X-ray technician, medical clerk and arts and crafts supervisor (Kulii). After receiving her bachelors degree, Lorde began work as a librarian at the Mount Vernon Public Library and pursued her master's degree of Library Science at Colombia University, from which she earned her degree in 1961. During her time at Colombia Lorde became increasingly involved in the gay community and culture of Greenwich Village. In 1962, Audre Lorde became the wife of Edward Ashley Rollins;whom with she had two children, Elizabeth and Johnathan, she later divorced Rollins in 1970 (Kulii). During her marriage Lorde became head librarian of Town School Library of New York City. Having been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1968 she became the resident poet at Tougaloo where she later met her life long partner, Frances Clayton (Trapasso).

Lorde's first book of poetry The First Cities was published in 1968 by Poet's Press and edited by Diane diPrima (Kulii). The First Cities does not openly speak about Lorde's blackness but rather innovates the form and tone that is present in African American literature of the time. Following only two years later was Cables to Rage. This volume written during Lorde's first years at Tougaloo speaks on motherhood, love, loss and is the first of her works of openly address her homosexuality (Kulii). Cables to Rage also set the general tone of rage and angry at inequalities that would follow through most of Lorde's later works (Reuman). Three years after Cables to Rage was published Broadside Press released From A Land Where Other People Live. This volume was nominated for the National Book Award for poetry in 1973 and addressed as a personal reflection the growth Lorde had experienced. Only a year later New York Head Shop and Museum was published, this book taking the proud rebellious tone coined by the African American poets of the 1960's as Lorde shares visual images of her home city in such a way as to call to attention the decay, neglect and poverty that was an everyday norm for her during childhood (Kulii).

Coal Lorde's first book to be published by a major publishing house, W. W. Norton, opened her writing to a much larger audience. While the poems of Coal mirror those of The First Cities and Cables to Rage in that the relationship of Lord and Adrienne Rich (Kulii) the themes of Coal are closer to those of New York Head Shop and Museum. Lorde also openly addresses her blackness and calls into open her feeling of inadequacy (Kulii). According to Beverly Threatt Kulii, author of The Oxford Companion to African American Literature, “Many of her [Lorde's] poems in Coal are also an indictment of an unjust society that allows women to be treated unfairly, sometimes brutally, and this acknowledgment boy Lorde intensifies her plea for cooperation and sisterhood among women,” (Kulii).

Also published by W. W. Norton was Lorde's 7^th book of poetry, The Black Unicorn Lorde works to incorporate African mythology as justification and support for her ideas on motherhood, women and racial pride. Having been diagnosed with breast cancer Lorde started journaling and after her last and final surgary in overcoming the cancer she published The Cancer Journals published by Spinsters Ink, in which she made “visible the viewpoint of a lesbian of color. Challenging traditional Western notions of illness and advocated women's ability, responsibility and right to make decisions about their health,” said Ann Reuman author of The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. In 1981, The Cancer Journals won the American Library Association Gay Caucus Book Award (Reuman) which Lorde celebrated by releasing Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. In 1988 Lorde published A Burst of Light in which she talked about her fight with liver cancer, which she was diagnosed with only six years after her mastectomy.

Audre Lorde had this to say of her own Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches published in 1984 by Crossing Press, “When I say I am a Black feminist, I mean I recognize that my power as well as my primary oppressions come as a result of my Blackness as well as my womanness, and therefore my struggles on both of these fronts are inseparable.” Gloria Hull in her essay “Living on the Line: Audre Lorde and Our Dead Behind Us," in Changing Our Own Words: Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women comments that Lorde's poetry is “basically a traditional kind of modernist free verse- laced with equivocation and allegory,” (Hull). Hull goes on to comment about Lorde's Our Dead Behind Us which was published in 1986 saying “Readers who by whatever means of experience, empathy, imagination or intelligence – are best capable to approximate Lorde's own positionality most appreciate her work.” (Hull). In a book review by “The Literary Times Supplement” Lorde's work is said to have described her as “a mature poet in full command of her craft,” (Phillips).

Lorde died on November 17, 1992 in Saint Croix (Trapasso). Before she died she participated in an African naming ceremony and was named Gambda Adisa, meaning Warrior: She Who Makes her Meaning Know (Reuman).

Bibliography of Audre Lorde

(in Alphabetical order)

A Burst of Light

Between Ourselves

Cables to Rage

Coal

From A Land Where Other People Live

I Am Your Sister: Black Women organizing Across Sexualities

Lesbian Party: An Anthology

Need: A Chorale For Black Women Voices

Our Dead Behind Us: Poems

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

The Black Unicorn

The Cancer Journals

The First Cities

The New York Head Shop and Museum

The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems

Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New

Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic ad Power

Women Poet- The East

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Works Cited

Hull, Gloria. "Living on the Line: Audre Lorde and Our Dead Behind Us." Changing Our Own Words:

Essays on Criticism, Theory, and Writing by Black Women. Rutgers University Press, 1989.

150-72. Print.

Kulii, Beverly Threatt, Ann Reuman, and Ann Trapasso. "Audre Lorde's Life and Career." Modern American Poetry. University of Illinois, n.d. Web. 19 Nov 2011. <www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lorde/life.htm>.

Lorde, Audre, and Joan Wylie Hall. Conversations With Audre Lorde. Jackson, MI: Univ Pr of

Mississippi, 2004. Print.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider, Essays And Speeches. Trumanburg, NY: Crossing Pr, 1984. Print.

Lorde, Audre. Zami, A New Spelling Of My Name. Trumanburg, NY: Crossing Pr, 1982. Print.

Phillips. "Book Review of "Our Dead Behind Us"." Times Literary Supplement. Apr 1988: n. page.

Web. 19 Nov. 2011.

Veaux, Alexis De. Warrior Poet, A Biography Of Audre Lorde. London: W. W. Norton & Company,

2006. Print.