Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde (/ˈɔːdri ˈlɔːrd/ AW-dree LORD; 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 and oppression. She believed that there could be "no hierarchy of oppressions" among "those who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children".

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. She was the recipient of national and international awards and the founding member of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. 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 (Byron), was born on April 20, 1898, in Barbados. Her mother, Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, was born in 1902 on the island Carriacou in Grenada. Lorde's mother was a light-skinned Black woman but sometimes passed as Spanish, for employment opportunities. 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. After their immigration, the new family settled in Harlem, a diverse neighborhood in upper Manhattan, New York. Lorde was the youngest of three daughters. Lorde was nearsighted to the point of being legally blind. At the age of four she learned to read at the same time she learned to talk, with the help of Augusta Braxton Baker, then children's librarian at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Her mother taught her to write at around the same time.

Born 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 property management 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. She even described herself as thinking in poetry. She 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. Poet Diane di Prima was a classmate and friend. 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". Lorde graduated from Hunter College High School in 1951.

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