Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist.

She was a self-described "black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet" who dedicated her life and talents to confronting all forms of injustice, as she believed there could be "no hierarchy of oppressions".

As a poet, she is well known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life.

As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation.

Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness, disability, and the exploration of black female identity.

Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934, to Caribbean immigrants.

Her father, Frederick Byron Lorde (known as Byron), hailed from Barbados and her mother, Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, was Grenadian and was born on the island of Carriacou.

Lorde's mother was of mixed ancestry but could pass for Spanish, which was a source of pride for her family.

Lorde's father was darker than the Belmar family liked, and they only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron's charm, ambition, and persistence.

The new family settled in Harlem.

Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind and the youngest of three daughters (her two older sisters were named Phyllis and Helen), Lorde grew up hearing her mother's stories about the West Indies.

At the age of four, she learned to talk while she learned to read, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time.

She wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade.

Born as Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she chose to drop the "y" from her first name while still a child, explaining in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name that she was more interested in the artistic symmetry of the "e"-endings in the two side-by-side names "Audre Lorde" than in spelling her name the way her parents had intended.

Lorde's relationship with her parents was difficult from a young age.

She spent very little time with her father and mother, who were both busy maintaining their real estate business in the tumultuous economy after the Great Depression. When she did see them, they were often cold or emotionally distant.

In particular, Lorde's relationship with her mother, who was deeply suspicious of people with darker skin than hers (which Lorde had) and the outside world in general, was characterized by "tough love" and strict adherence to family rules.

Lorde's difficult relationship with her mother figured prominently in her later poems, such as Coal's "Story Books on a Kitchen Table."

As a child, Lorde struggled with communication, and came to appreciate the power of poetry as a form of expression.

In fact, she describes herself as thinking in poetry.

She also memorized a great deal of poetry, and would use it to communicate, to the extent that, "If asked how she was feeling, Audre would reply by reciting a poem."

Around the age of twelve, she began writing her own poetry and connecting with others at her school who were considered "outcasts", as she felt she was.

Raised Catholic, Lorde attended parochial schools before moving on to Hunter College High School, a secondary school for intellectually gifted students.

She graduated in 1951.

While attending Hunter, Lorde published her first poem in Seventeen magazine after her school's literary journal rejected it for being inappropriate.

Also in high school, Lorde participated in poetry workshops sponsored by the Harlem Writers Guild, but noted that she always felt like somewhat of an outcast from the Guild.

She felt she was not accepted because she "was both crazy and queer but [they thought] I would grow out of it all."

Zami places her father's death from a stroke around New Year's 1953.

In 1954, she spent a pivotal year as a student at the National University of Mexico, a period she described as a time of affirmation and renewal.

During this time, she confirmed her identity on personal and artistic levels as both a lesbian and a poet.

On her return to New York, Lorde attended Hunter College, and graduated in the class of 1959.

While there, she worked as a librarian, continued writing, and became an active participant in the gay culture of Greenwich Village.

She furthered her education at Columbia University, earning a master's degree in library science in 1961.

During this period, she worked as a public librarian in nearby Mount Vernon, New York.

In 1968 Lorde was writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi.

Lorde's time at Tougaloo College, like her year at the National University of Mexico, was a formative experience for her as an artist.

She led workshops with her young, black undergraduate students, many of whom were eager to discuss the civil rights issues of that time.

Through her interactions with her students, she reaffirmed her desire not only to live out her "crazy and queer" identity, but also to devote attention to the formal aspects of her craft as a poet.

Her book of poems, Cables to Rage, came out of her time and experiences at Tougaloo.

From 1972 to 1987, Lorde resided on Staten Island.