Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde (1934–1992) was a self-described “Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, and poet,” who dedicated her life and talents to confronting all forms of injustice and oppression. Known for her technical mastery, emotional expression, and poems that confronted civil and social injustices, she received the National Book Award and other national and international awards and was the founding member of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.
Born in New York City to West Indian immigrant parents, she published her first poem in Seventeen magazine while still in high school. She was educated at Hunter College (B.A. in literature and philosophy, 1959) and Columbia University (M.L.S., 1961). She was a librarian in the New York public schools throughout the 1960s. In 1972, Lorde met her long-time partner, Frances Clayton, and began teaching as poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College. Lorde’s contributions to feminist theory, critical race studies, and queer theory blended her personal experiences with broader political concerns. Lorde articulated the intersections of race, class, and gender in canonical essays such as “The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master’s House.” Her early poetry collections include The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970), and From a Land Where Other People Live (1972), which was nominated for a National Book Award. Later works, including New York Head Shop and Museum (1974), Coal (1976), and The Black Unicorn (1978), featured powerful poems of protest.
Lorde’s poetry is celebrated for its calls for social and racial justice and its depictions of queer experience and sexuality. In addition to being an influential poet, Lorde was also a noted prose writer. The Cancer Journals (1980), which recounts her experience with breast cancer and mastectomy, is considered a major work of illness narrative. Other publications include Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), and A Burst of Light (1988), which won the National Book Award.
A professor of English at John Jay College and Hunter College, Lorde was poet laureate of New York from 1991–1992. Several organizations and archives have been established in Lorde’s honor and preserve her legacy, including the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City and the Audre Lorde Project in Brooklyn. Lorde’s papers are housed at Spelman College Archives in Atlanta and at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at Free University of Berlin.