Audre Lorde: Encyclopedia - Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde

Audre Geraldine Lorde (February 18, 1934 in Harlem, New York City - 1992) was a multi-faceted writer and activist.

Audre Lorde - Life

Lorde was born in New York City to parents of West Indian heritage; Frederick Byron Lorde and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde. Lorde was nearsighted and legally blind. The youngest of five children, she grew up in Harlem during the Depression, hearing her mother's stories about the West Indies. She learned to talk while she learned to read, at the age of four. Her mother taught her to write during this time. She wrote her first poem when she was in the eighth grade. After graduating from high school, she attended Hunter College from 1954 to 1959, graduating with a bachelors degree. While studying library science, Lorde supported herself working various odd jobs: factory worker, ghost writer, social worker, X-ray technician, medical clerk, and arts and crafts supervisor. In 1954, she spent a pivotal year as a student at the National University of Mexico, a period described by Lorde as a time of affirmation and renewal because she confirmed her identity on personal and artistic levels as a lesbian and poet. On her return to New York, Lorde went to college, worked as a librarian, continued writing, and became an active participant in the gay culture of Greenwich Village. Lorde furthered her education at Columbia University, earning a master’s degree in library science in 1961. During this time she also worked as a librarian at Mount Vernon Public Library and married attorney Edward Ashley Rollins; they later divorced in 1975 after having two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. In 1966, Lorde became head librarian at Town School Library in New York City where she remained until 1968. She died of cancer on November 17, 1992 in St. Croix after a 14 year struggle. In her own words, she was a "black lesbian, mother, warrior, poet". Before she died, Lorde in an African naming ceremony took the name Gamba Adisa, meaning Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.

Audre Lorde - Career

Lorde’s poetry was published regularly during the 1960s: in Langston Hughes's 1962 New Negro Poets, USA, in several foreign anthologies, and in black literary magazines. During this time she was politically active in the civil rights, antiwar, and feminist movements. Her first volume of poetry, The First Cities (1968), was published by the Poet's Press and edited by Diane di Prima, a former classmate and friend from Hunter College High School. Dudley Randall, a poet and critic, asserted in his review of the book that "[Lorde] does not wave a black flag, but her blackness is there, implicit, in the bone." Lorde's second volume, Cables to Rage (1970), which was mainly written during her tenure at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, addresses themes of love, betrayal, childbirth, and the complexities of raising children. It is particularly noteworthy for the poem "Martha" in which Lorde poetically confirms her homosexuality: "we shall love each other here if ever at all." Later books continued her political aims in gay rights, and feminism.

Audre Lorde - Bibliography

• The First Cities (1968)
• Cables to Rage (1970)
• From a Land Where Other People Live (1973)
• New York Head Shop and Museum (1974)
• Coal (1976)
• Between Our Selves (1976)
• The Black Unicorn (1978)
• Chosen Poems: Old and New (1982)
• Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1983)
• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984)
• Our Dead Behind Us (1986)
• The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance (1993)

Audre Lorde - Famous Quotes

"When I dare to be powerful - to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." -Audre Lorde

"Each time you love, love as deeply as if it were forever Only, nothing is eternal" -Audre Lorde

"I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect." -Audre Lorde

"I am who I am, doing what I came to do, acting upon you like a drug or chisel or remind you of your me-ness as I discover you in myself." -Audre Lorde

"It is not our differences that divide us. it is our inability to recognize, accept & celebrate those differences. -Audre Lorde

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world." -Audre Lorde

"We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other. -Audre Lorde

"Your Silence Will Not Protect You..." -Audre Lorde

"The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." -Audre Lorde from Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Audre Lorde", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki