Her third collection, From a Land Where Other People Live (1973), was a finalist for a National Book Award for Poetry. It also included “Martha,” a poem that acknowledged her lesbianism. Lorde’s work was already notable for her strong expressions of African American identity, but her second anthology, Cables to Rage (1970), took on more overtly political themes, such as racism, sexism, and violence.
There, she discovered her love of teaching and met Frances Clayton, a professor of psychology and her partner until 1989. That same year, she earned a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and became the writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College, a historically Black college in Mississippi. Lorde published her first volume of poems, The First Cities, in 1968. Lorde and Rollins divorced in 1970.ĭuring the 1960s, Lorde began publishing her poetry in magazines and anthologies, and also took part in the civil rights, antiwar, and women’s liberation movements. In 1962, Lorde married Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, and they had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. She worked as a librarian in New York City public schools from 1961-1968. Lorde then earned her bachelor’s degree from Hunter College and a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University.
It was there that she grew confident in her identity as both a lesbian and a poet. After an English teacher rejected one of her poems, Lorde submitted it to Seventeen magazine – it became her first professional publication.Īfter working a variety of jobs in New York and Connecticut, Lorde studied for a year at the National University of Mexico in Cuernavaca. She graduated from Hunter High School, where she edited the literary magazine. She once commented, “I used to speak in poetry.when I couldn’t find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that’s what started me writing poetry.” She was around 12 or 13 at the time. Lorde connected with poetry from a young age.
As a child, Lorde dropped the “y” from her first name to become Audre. She was the youngest of three sisters and grew up in Manhattan. A prominent member of the women’s and LGBTQ rights movements, her writings called attention to the multifaceted nature of identity and the ways in which people from different walks of life could grow stronger together.Īudrey Geraldine Lorde was born on Februto Frederic and Linda Belmar Lorde, immigrants from Grenada. Poet and author Audre Lorde used her writing to shine light on her experience of the world as a Black lesbian woman and later, as a mother and person suffering from cancer.
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