(Image Uploaded on Photo Upload Folder on Google Drive – to Go Before Story Starts – Image shows holding up Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider)
As Black History Month is coming to an end, Women’s History Month is starting. With that being said, I wanted to talk about an important figure that should be noticed in general beyond just these months, Audre Lorde. According to the Poetry Foundation, Lorde described herself as a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.”
Lorde was born in New York City in 1934 to Frederick Byron Lorde and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde with three siblings. Her parents were immigrants who were originally going to move the family back to Grenada located in the West Indies, but stayed because of the Great Depression. Lorde would graduate high school and attend college, but even before she started her bachelor’s degree, she had published her writing. In high school, her piece “Spring” was published in Seventeen Magazine in 1951, which she only submitted after her English teacher had rejected the poem.
Once ending her high school career, she attended the National University of Mexico for a year. This is where she would grow not only more confident in being a poet but as a lesbian as well. She eventually moved back to New York to finish her B.A. at Hunter College while also working at working-class lesbian bars. After Hunter, she attended Columbia University, earning her Master’s in Library Science, and worked as a librarian.
During her time as a librarian, Lorde would start to publish more of her work and married Edwins Rollins who was a gay, white man; they had two children together, but eventually divorced. Two years before the divorce in 1968, she published The First Cities, which was a volume of her poems. This would then lead Lorde to get the offer of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The grant would give Lorde the position of being a writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Not only that, but she would also meet her next partner, Frances Clayton, who she would be with for quite some time.
At Tougaloo, Lorde started to shift her writing to talk more about civil rights, women’s movements, and being anti-war. Some of the known pieces to come out of this were Cables to Rage, From a Land Where Other People Live, The Black Unicorn, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and Sister Outsider. All of these pieces touch on the topics mentioned, but for me, the first piece I read by Lorde was Sister Outsider after reading the chapters, “Poetry is Not a Luxury” and “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” for a previous course.
Reading the chapters made me decide to purchase the whole book that is filled with her essays and speeches. These two chapters are still probably my favorite as “Poetry is Not a Luxury” talks about the importance that poetry offers women.“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” in which she talks about how we should use the differences we have for power rather than one whole division; such as within feminism discussions when she attended the New York University Institute for Humanities conference. Though these are my two favorites, the whole book is a must-read, along with her other pieces.
This wouldn’t be Lorde’s last work either. After her time as a librarian, teacher, mother, and poet, she would also take on the role of helping other black and lesbian women who were going through cancer when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977. Lorde wrote on her experiences, publishing The Cancer Journals in 1980. Her reason to do so was when she was going through treatment, she felt isolated because anything she could find on the experience was told by white or heterosexual women. This book would also gain her a win for the American Library Association’s Gay Caucus Book of The Year Award in 1981.
As time went on, Lorde would be faced with cancer again being diagnosed with liver cancer. At this time she decided to move to St. Croix in the United States Virgin Islands and be with her final partner, Dr. Gloria I. Joseph, who Lorde has not only grown up with, but also faced cancer at the same time. During her last few years, Lorde would publish her final pieces, Our Dead Behind Us, A Burst of Light, and The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems, as well as Hell Under God’s Order with Joseph before passing in 1992.
Beyond just her writing, Lorde also was influential in other ways. She taught through colleges such as Lehman College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Hunter College. She also was associated with the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press and did workshops through the African Ancestral Lesbians United for Societal Change (AALUSC) or Salsa Soul Sisters, which was an organization for out lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer sisters a part of the New York City area. She and Joseph would also create multiple organizations later on such as Che Lumumba School for Truth or the Women’s Coalition of St. Croix.
As well as beyond her death, Joseph had kept Lorde’s memory alive with her book, The Wind is the Spirit: The Life, Love and Legacy of Audre Lorde. There are also ways that Lorde has been remembered through the city such as with The Audre Lorde Project (ALP) which is a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Transgender, and Gender Non-Conforming People of Color center that hosts programs and support groups. As well as The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry given by The Publishing Triangle (an association of LGBTQ people in publishing). The award started in 2001 and the winner would receive an amount of one thousand dollars if they won.
Even though this seems like a lot of information, there are many more ways Audre Lorde has been important and influential. Not just for her communities, but for advocacy in general. Her writing and words have truly left a mark on many no matter how much time has passed. So, as I close this piece, I hope you look into and even read into Lorde’s work and legacy. In addition, I have also attached some links below that can help learn about this incredible woman.
Links to Learn More About Audre Lorde:
- National Women’s History Museum – Audre Lorde
- The National Museum of African American History & Culture – Audre Lorde
- Black Past – Audre Lorde
- Remembering the Life, Love, and Legacy of Audre Lorde
- Poetry Foundation – Audre Lorde
- The Audre Lorde Project
- Audre Lorde’s Reading at Amerika Haus Berlin 1984, “A Woman Speaks”
- Audre Lorde Interview with Blanche Cook 1982