Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet, and civil rights activist. She described herself as a “Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet” and spent her life fighting against injustice and oppression. Lorde believed there should be “no hierarchy of oppressions” among “those who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children”.
Audrey Geraldine Lorde was born on February 18, 1934, in New York City.
Lorde’s father, Byron, was born in Barbados in 1898, and her mother, Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, was born in 1902 on Carriacou in Grenada. The Belmar family did not approve of Byron’s darker skin, but allowed the marriage because of his charm and ambition. After moving to the United States, the family settled in Harlem, New York. Lorde was the youngest of three daughters and was legally blind due to severe nearsightedness. She learned to read and talk at age four with help from Augusta Braxton Baker, a children’s librarian at the New York Public Library. Her mother taught her to write around the same time.
Audrey Geraldine Lorde decided to drop the “y” from her first name as a child. In her book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, she explained that she preferred the artistic look of “e” at the end of both names, rather than spelling her name as her parents wanted.
Lorde had a strained relationship with her parents from an early age. They were often occupied with their property management business after the Great Depression, so she saw them infrequently and found them distant. Her mother, in particular, was wary of people with darker skin, including Lorde, and enforced strict family rules. This complex relationship influenced Lorde’s later poetry, including Coal’s “Story Books on a Kitchen Table.”
As a child, Lorde struggled to communicate and found that poetry enabled her to express herself. She said she thought in poetry and memorized many poems, often using them to communicate. “If asked how she was feeling, Audre would reply by reciting a poem.” By age twelve, she began writing her own poems and formed friendships with other students who also felt like outsiders.
Lorde was raised Catholic and attended parochial schools before enrolling at Hunter College High School, a school for gifted students. Poet Diane di Prima was her classmate and friend. While at Hunter, Lorde published her first poem in Seventeen magazine after her school’s literary journal rejected it as inappropriate. In high school, she participated in poetry workshops with the Harlem Writers Guild but often felt like an outsider. She believed this was 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.
In 1962, Lorde married attorney Edwin Rollins, a White gay man. Although Lorde had lived openly as a lesbian since college, both chose to remain closeted due to homophobic discrimination. They maintained an open relationship, allowing each other to pursue same-sex relationships. Lorde and Rollins divorced in 1970 after having two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. In 1966, Lorde became head librarian at Town School Library in New York City, a position she held until 1968.
During her time in Mississippi in 1968, she met Frances Clayton, a White lesbian and psychology professor, who became her romantic partner until 1989. They raised Lorde’s children together, and they lived openly as a lesbian couple.
Lorde was briefly romantically involved with the sculptor and painter Mildred Thompson after meeting her in Nigeria at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC 77).
Lorde’s final partner was Dr. Gloria Joseph, a Black feminist. They lived together on St. Croix, Joseph’s home island. Lorde and Joseph began their relationship in 1981. After Lorde was diagnosed with liver cancer, she left Clayton and moved to St. Croix in 1986. They remained together until Lorde’s death and co-founded organizations including the Che Lumumba School for Truth, Women’s Coalition of St. Croix, Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa, and Doc Loc Apiary.
Lorde was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1978 and underwent a mastectomy. Six years later, the cancer spread to her liver. After her initial diagnosis, she wrote The Cancer Journals, which won the American Library Association Gay Caucus Book of the Year Award in 1981. She was the subject of the documentary A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde, which highlighted her roles as author, poet, activist, feminist, lesbian, teacher, survivor, and advocate against bigotry. She once said: “What I leave behind has a life of its own. I’ve said this about poetry; I’ve said it about children. Well, in a sense I’m saying it about the very artifact of who I have been.”
She cries out against it as the voice of indignant humanity. Audre Lorde is the voice of the eloquent outsider who speaks in a language that can reach and touch people everywhere.” In 1992, she received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle. In 2001, Publishing Triangle established the Audre Lorde Award to honor works of lesbian poetry.
Lorde died of breast cancer at age 58 on November 17, 1992, in St. Croix, where she lived with Gloria Joseph. Before her death, she participated in an African naming ceremony and received the name Gamba Adisa, meaning “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.”
The Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in New York City is named after Michael Callen and Audre Lorde. It provides medical care to the city’s LGBT population regardless of ability to pay. Callen-Lorde is the only primary care center in New York City established specifically for the LGBT community.
Founded in 1994, the Audre Lorde Project is a Brooklyn-based group for LGBT people of color. It focuses on community organizing and nonviolent activism around progressive issues in New York City, especially those affecting LGBT communities, AIDS and HIV, immigrants, prison reform, and youth of color.
In June 2019, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated Lorde’s Staten Island home as a landmark.
For their first match of March 2019, the women of the United States women’s national soccer team each wore a jersey with the name of a woman they were honoring on the back; Megan Rapinoe chose the name of Lorde.
