"[82] In 1992, she received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle. Lorde married attorney Edwin Rollins, who was a white, bisexual man, in 1962. The couple had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan, and later divorced. She did not just identify with one category but she wanted to celebrate all parts of herself equally. She had a brief marriage to attorney Edwin Rollins. But that strength is illusory, for it is fashioned within the context of male models of power. Alexis Pauline Gumbs credits Kitchen Table as an inspiration for BrokenBeautiful Press, the digital distribution initiative she founded in 2002. Audre Lorde is the voice of the eloquent outsider who speaks in a language that can reach and touch people everywhere. Through poems like Coal, essays like The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Masters House, and memoirs like Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde became one of the mid-20th centurys most radically honest voices and important activists. And finally, we destroy each other's differences that are perceived as "lesser". Lorde-Rollins currently holds dual appointments as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Mount Sinai Medical School, where she concentrates her clinical time in adolescent gynecology at the Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center. [61] Lorde insists that the fight between black women and men must end to end racist politics. IE 11 is not supported. [9] She emphasizes the need for different groups of people (particularly white women and African-American women) to find common ground in their lived experience, but also to face difference directly, and use it as a source of strength rather than alienation. [36], The Cancer Journals (1980) and A Burst of Light (1988) both use non-fiction prose, including essays and journal entries . In Lorde's volume The Black Unicorn (1978), she describes her identity within the mythos of African female deities of creation, fertility, and warrior strength. Born in New York City to Caribbean immigrants, Lorde earned degrees at Hunter College and Columbia University and worked as a librarian in New York public schools throughout the 1960s. The trip was sponsored by The Black Scholar and the Union of Cuban Writers. While there, she forged friendships with May Ayim, Ika Hgel-Marshall, Helga Emde, and other Black German feminists that would last until her death. Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934 to Caribbean immigrants. In 1952 she began to define herself as a lesbian. Poetry, considered lesser than prose and more common among lower class and working people, was rejected from women's magazine collectives which Lorde claims have robbed "women of each others' energy and creative insight". Worldwide HQ. "[98] Held at John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at Free University of Berlin (Freie Universitt), the Audre Lorde Archive holds correspondence and teaching materials related to Lorde's teaching and visits to Freie University from 1984 to 1992. "[61] Nash explains that Lorde is urging black feminists to embrace politics rather than fear it, which will lead to an improvement in society for them. [24] During her time in Germany, Lorde became an influential part of the then-nascent Afro-German movement. The Audre Lorde Papers were donated to Spelman College in Lorde's will and received by the . In 1962, she married attorney Edwin Rollins, a white gay man, and had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan, with him. The narrative deals with the evolution of Lorde's sexuality and self-awareness. '"[49] This theory is today known as intersectionality. Lorde used those identities within her work and ultimately it guided her to create pieces that embodied lesbianism in a light that educated people of many social classes and identities on the issues black lesbian women face in society. At Columbia, she met Edwin Rollins, whom she married in 1962. "[43], In relation to non-intersectional feminism in the United States, Lorde famously said:[38][44]. [46], The film documents Lorde's efforts to empower and encourage women to start the Afro-German movement. While acknowledging that the differences between women are wide and varied, most of Lorde's works are concerned with two subsets that concerned her primarily race and sexuality. For most of the 1960s, Lorde worked as a librarian in Mount Vernon, New York, and in New York City. Lorde died of breast cancer in 1992. The pair divorced in 1970, and two years later, Lorde met her long-term partner, Frances Clayton. She furthered her education at Columbia University, earning a master's degree in library science in 1961. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media. In the same essay, she proclaimed, "now we must recognize difference among women who are our equals, neither inferior nor superior, and devise ways to use each others' difference to enrich our visions and our joint struggles"[38] Doing so would lead to more inclusive and thus, more effective global feminist goals. [58], Lorde held that the key tenets of feminism were that all forms of oppression were interrelated; creating change required taking a public stand; differences should not be used to divide; revolution is a process; feelings are a form of self-knowledge that can inform and enrich activism; and acknowledging and experiencing pain helps women to transcend it. In the late 1980s, she also helped establish Sisterhood in Support of Sisters (SISA) in South Africa to benefit black women who were affected by apartheid and other forms of injustice. 2023 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved, The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Masters House, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. Audre Lorde Audre Lorde was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, and civil rights activist. The trip was sponsored by The Black Scholar and the Union of Cuban Writers. Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind and the youngest of three daughters (her two older sisters were named Phyllis and Helen), Lorde grew up hearing her mother's stories about the West Indies. When Lorde learned to write her name at 4 years old, she had a tendency to forget the Y in Audrey, in part because she did not like the tail of the Y hanging down below the line, as she wrote in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. Black feminism is not white feminism in Blackface. "[74] Lorde donated some of her manuscripts and personal papers to the Lesbian Herstory Archives. Lordes passion for reading began at the New York Public Librarys 135th Street Branchsince relocated and renamed the Countee Cullen Branchwhere childrens librarian Augusta Baker read her stories and then taught her how to read, with the help of Lorde's mother. "[65], Lorde urged her readers to delve into and discover these differences, discussing how ignoring differences can lead to ignoring any bias and prejudice that might come with these differences, while acknowledging them can enrich our visions and our joint struggles. I became a librarian because I really believed I would gain tools for ordering and analyzing information, Lorde told Adrienne Rich in 1979. I couldnt know everything in the world, but I thought I would gain tools for learning it. She came to realize that those research skills were only one part of the learning process: I can document the road to Abomey for you, and true, you might not get there without that information. Carriacou is a small Grenadine island where her mother was born. She was deeply involved with several social justice movements in the United States. She was invited by FU lecturer Dagmar Schultz who had met her at the UN "World Women's Conference" in Copenhagen in 1980. Lorde died of liver cancer at the age of 58 in 1992, in St. Croix, where she was living with her partner, black feminist scholar Gloria I. Joseph. University of Minnesota, "Audre Lorde, 58, A Poet, Memoirist And Lecturer, Dies", Connexxus Women's Center/Centro de Mujeres, Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians, Amazones d'Hier, Lesbiennes d'Aujourd'hui, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Audre_Lorde&oldid=1141162773, American people of United States Virgin Islands descent, Columbia University School of Library Service alumni, Deaths from cancer in the United States Virgin Islands, Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry winners, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 23 February 2023, at 17:49. In June 2019on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riotsthe New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission recognized Lordes contributions to the LGBTQ+ community by naming the house an official historic landmark. For most of the 1960s, Audre Lorde worked as a librarian in Mount Vernon, New York, and in New York City. Lorde and Rollins divorced in 1970. "[41] People are afraid of others' reactions for speaking, but mostly for demanding visibility, which is essential to live. While highlighting Lorde's intersectional points through a lens that focuses on race, gender, socioeconomic status/class and so on, we must also embrace one of her salient identities; Lorde was not afraid to assert her differences, such as skin color and sexual orientation, but used her own identity against toxic black male masculinity. [9], In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984), Lorde asserts the necessity of communicating the experience of marginalized groups to make their struggles visible in a repressive society. She memorized poems as a child, and when asked a question, shed often respond with one of them. She was known for introducing herself with a string of her own: Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet. To Lorde, pretending our differences didnt existor considering them causes for separation and suspicionwas preventing us from moving forward into a society that welcomed diverse identities without hierarchy. Elitism. [14], In 1954, she spent a pivotal year as a student at the National University of Mexico, a period she described as a time of affirmation and renewal. In 1962, Lorde married Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, and they had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. Lorde criticized privileged peoples habit of burdening the oppressed with the responsibility to teach the oppressors their mistakes, which she considered a constant drain of energy.. She was 58 years old. Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde), was a Caribbean-American, lesbian activist, writer, poet, teacher and visionary. One of her most notable efforts was her activist work with Afro-German women in the 1980s. Her mother, Linda Belmar Lorde, had Grenadian and Portuguese ancestry; and her father, Frederick Byron Lorde, had been born in Barbados. Born a rebel, she never had easy relationship at home, developing friendship with a group of 'outcasts' at school. During that time, in addition to writing and teaching she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.[18]. Contribute. In a keynote speech at the National Third-World Gay and Lesbian Conference on October 13, 1979, titled, "When will the ignorance end?" While "feminism" is defined as "a collection of movements and ideologies that share a common goal: to define, establish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women" by imposing simplistic opposition between "men" and "women",[60] the theorists and activists of the 1960s and 1970s usually neglected the experiential difference caused by factors such as race and gender among different social groups. Throughout Lorde's career she included the idea of a collective identity in many of her poems and books. They lived there from 1972 until 1987 [PDF]. But there was another reason why their marriage was unusual. In 2001, Publishing Triangle instituted the Audre Lorde Award to honour works of lesbian poetry. [76], 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). To be Black, female, gay, and out of the closet in a white environment, even to the extent of dancing in the Bagatelle, was considered by many Black lesbians to be simply suicidal, wrote Lorde in the collection of essays and poetry. The couple had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan, but divorced in 1970. She then earned her master's degree in library science at Columbia University, and married Edwin Rollins, a white gay man. Audre Lorde was previously married to Edwin Rollins. Around the 1960s, second-wave feminism became centered around discussions and debates about capitalism as a "biased, discriminatory, and unfair"[68] institution, especially within the context of the rise of globalization. There are three specific ways Western European culture responds to human difference. [11], Raised Catholic, Lorde attended parochial schools before moving on to Hunter College High School, a secondary school for intellectually gifted students. When a poem of hers, Spring, was rejectedthe editor found its style too sensualist, la Romantic poetryshe decided to send it to Seventeen magazine instead. As an activist-author, she never shied away from difficult subjects. Born: February 18, 1934, Harlem, New York, NY Died . It meant being really invisible. In The Master's Tools, she wrote that many people choose to pretend the differences between us do not exist, or that these differences are insurmountable, adding, "Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic. In 1984, at the invitation of German feminist Dagmar Schultz, Lorde taught a poetry course on Black American women poets at West Berlins Free University. [1], In 1981, Lorde was among the founders of the Women's Coalition of St. Croix,[9] an organization dedicated to assisting women who have survived sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. Her argument aligned white feminists who did not recognize race as a feminist issue with white male slave-masters, describing both as "agents of oppression". Lorde's work on black feminism continues to be examined by scholars today. During this period, she worked as a public librarian in nearby Mount Vernon, New York. [9], From 1972 to 1987, Lorde resided on Staten Island. Audre Lorde is a member of the following lists: LGBT rights activists from the United States, American poets and 1934 births. But once you get there, only you know why, what you came for, as you search for it and perhaps find it.. The couple later divorced. During that time, Lorde published some of her most renowned works, including her poetry collections From a Land Where Other People Live and The Black Unicorn, and her biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of my Name. She had two children with her husband, Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, before they divorced in 1970. Audre married Edwin Rollins in 1962. Similarly, author and poet Alice Walker coined the term "womanist" in an attempt to distinguish black female and minority female experience from "feminism". "[9][12][13], Zami places her father's death from a stroke around New Year's 1953. [31] The documentary has received seven awards, including Winner of the Best Documentary Audience Award 2014 at the 15th Reelout Queer Film + Video Festival, the Gold Award for Best Documentary at the International Film Festival for Women, Social Issues, and Zero Discrimination, and the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Barcelona International LGBT Film Festival. Audre Lorde called for the embracing of these differences. "[66], In The Cancer Journals she wrote "If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." [9] In fact, she describes herself as thinking in poetry. It inspired them to take charge of their identities and discover who they are outside of the labels put on them by society. She has made lasting contributions in the fields of feminist theory, critical race studies and queer theory through her pedagogy and writing. [23], In 1984, Lorde started a visiting professorship in West Berlin at the Free University of Berlin. Lorde, Audre. The couple remained together until Lorde's death. She graduated in 1951. Born as 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. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices. [95][96], 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.[97]. Lorde finds herself among some of these "deviant" groups in society, which set the tone for the status quo and what "not to be" in society. [91], In 2014 Lorde was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display in Chicago, Illinois, that celebrates LGBT history and people.[92][93]. In Broeck, Sabine; Bolaki, Stella. Heterosexism. [27], Lorde's impact on the Afro-German movement was the focus of the 2012 documentary by Dagmar Schultz. And so began Lordes career as an activist-author, one who never shied away from difficult subjects, but instead, embraced them in all their complexity. Lorde replied with both critiques and hope:[71]. The Audre Lorde Papers are held at Spelman College Archives in Atlanta. She declined reconstructive surgery, and for the rest of her life refused to conceal that she was missing one breast. [4] Lorde insists that the fight between black women and men must end to end racist politics. "[38] In other words, the individual voices and concerns of women and color and women in developing nations would be the first step in attaining the autonomy with the potential to develop and transform their communities effectively in the age (and future) of globalization. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. I used to love the evenness of AUDRELORDE, she explained. ", Nominated for the National Book Award for poetry in 1973, From a Land Where Other People Live (Broadside Press) shows Lorde's personal struggles with identity and anger at social injustice. While highlighting Lorde's intersectional points through a lens that focuses on race, gender, socioeconomic status/class and so on, we must also embrace one of her salient identities; lesbianism. She married attorney Edwin Rollins in 1962. [16], Lorde's deeply personal book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), subtitled a "biomythography", chronicles her childhood and adulthood. Her second one, published in 1970, includes explicit references to love and an erotic relationship between two women. Her mother, Linda Belmar Lorde, had Grenadian and Portuguese. Very little womanist literature relates to lesbian or bisexual issues, and many scholars consider the reluctance to accept homosexuality accountable to the gender simplistic model of womanism. Lorde's criticism of feminists of the 1960s identified issues of race, class, age, gender and sexuality. We chose our name because the kitchen is the center of the home, the place where women in particular work and communicate with each other, Smith wrote in 1989. Lorde didnt balk at labels. More specifically she states: "As white women ignore their built-in privilege of whiteness and define woman in terms of their own experience alone, then women of color become 'other'. 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. Lorde married Edwin Rollins, a white man, in 1962; they had a son and a daughter. Well, in a sense I'm saying it about the very artifact of who I have been. [38] Lorde saw this already happening with the lack of inclusion of literature from women of color in the second-wave feminist discourse. That diversity can be a generative force, a source of energy fueling our visions of action for the future. An attendee of a 1978 reading of Lorde's essay "Uses for the Erotic: the Erotic as Power" says: "She asked if all the lesbians in the room would please stand. The title Zami, a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers, paid homage to the bridge and field of women that made up Lordes life. Lorde inspired Afro-German women to create a community of like-minded people. [88][89] The SNM is the first U.S. national monument dedicated to LGBTQ rights and history,[90] and the wall's unveiling was timed to take place during the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. After a long history of systemic racism in Germany, Lorde introduced a new sense of empowerment for minorities. [15] On her return to New York, Lorde attended Hunter College, and graduated in the class of 1959. "Today we march," she said, "lesbians and gay men and our children, standing in our own names together with all our struggling sisters and brothers here and around the world, in the Middle East, in Central America, in the Caribbean and South Africa, sharing our commitment to work for a joint livable future. 82 ] in fact, she never shied away from difficult subjects insists that the fight between black women connect. Her own: black, lesbian activist, writer, poet, we destroy each other 's differences are... 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