Audre Lorde

In 1962, Audre Lorde married Edward Ashley Rollins, and had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan, with him.

In 1968, she went alone to Mississippi, where she met Frances Clayton, a white woman. On returning to New York, she decided to end her marriage, divorcing Rollins in 1970.

It is not exactly known when, but when her children were seven and eight, she started a relationship with Frances Clayton, who became her long term live-in lover. Later she partnered with Dr. Gloria I. Joseph, a black feminist icon, spending her last days with her on Joseph’s native island, St. Crux.

Audre Lorde was born on February 18, 1934 in Harlem, New York City. Named at birth as ‘Audrey’, she dropped the ‘y’ early in her childhood because she fancied that Audre Lorde, both ending with ‘e’, sounded more symmetrical. She also hated the tail of ‘y’ hanging from her name.

Her parents were of Afro-Caribbean descent. Her father, Frederick Byron Lorde, originally from Barbados, was in the real estate business. He was very charming and ambitious; but rather aloof towards his children.

Her mother, Linda nee Belmar, was from Grenada. Although of African-Caribbean descent, she had a lighter skin and was often passed as Spanish. She was also very strict and Audre, born rebel, never had easy relationship with her.

Audre was born youngest of her parents’ three children, having two elder sisters named Phyllis and Helen. Born near-sighted to the point of being legally blind and also tongue-tied, which inhibited her speech development, she was never close to her sisters.

An unusual child, she did not speak until she was four years old. As soon as she started speaking, Linda introduced her to the alphabets and very soon she learned to read and write.

While Audre Lorde had been writing poems since the age of fifteen, her career as a poet began to bloom from 1962, when her poetry first appeared in Langston Hughes's ‘New Negro Poets’. Subsequently, she began to have her poems published in number of black literary magazines and foreign anthologies.

In 1965, she joined St. Clare's School of Nursing as a librarian, becoming head librarian at The Town School in the following year and held the position till 1968. All along she continued to publish poems in different journals.

In 1967, Diane di Prima, who studied with her at Hunt Collage High School, urged her to prepare a manuscript for her first book. Entitled, ‘The First Cities’, it was published by Poets Press in 1968. In the same year, she was offered the post of poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College.

The Tougaloo College was a small historically black institution in Mississippi. Although her assignment was for six weeks only, she happily accepted the position, travelling to the deep south for the first time in her life. It was also her first teaching job.

At Tougaloo, she was exposed to a very different experience, the majority of the students were African-Americans. This was also the time when African-American students were becoming militant. During this period, she wrote number of poems, which was published as ‘Cables of Rage’ in 1970.

On her return to New York, Audre Lorde joined the City University under the ‘Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge’ program, a pre-baccalaureate course for disadvantaged students. After teaching here for one year, she taught at Lehman College for a brief period.

In 1970, Lorde joined John Jay College of Criminal Justice, under City University New York, as a Professor in English. During this period, she published several books, the first being ‘From a Land Where Other People Live’ (1973). In this volume, she introduced African mythology to express feminine concepts.

In 1974, she published ‘New York Head Shop and Museum’, a book of poems that has often been characterized as her most radical work. In this work, she took her readers through the visual journey of the city, depicting neglect and poverty that confronts its inhabitants.

In 1976, she published ‘Coal’ and ‘Between Ourselves’. ‘Coal’, her first book to be published by a major publisher, introduced her to a wider readership. Although the book contained many previously published poems it is unique in that it projects different layers of her identity; "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet."

In 1977, she became associated with Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press. In the same year, she underwent a surgery, as she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Later, she also had to undergo mastectomy. She kept detailed journal of her ordeal and published it as ‘The Cancer Journal’ in 1980.