Voices of Color: Audre Lorde, Lesbian Mother Warrior Poet.
As Pride month continues, we look at the life of Audre Lorde: American, writer, poet, womanist, radical feminist, professor, philosopher, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet." She dedicated her life and talent to confronting and addressing the injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. She wore so many different hats, as she felt that she was so many different identities. She knew how to "accessorize" as well as turn a poised but sharp eloquent phrase. Her work focused on the importance of acknowledging, respecting, and celebrating our differences as well as our commonalities in defining identity. It is in the acceptance and acknowledgment of these differences that we find the strength to stand together against our oppressors. Audre Lorde taught us that there is strength in our differences and that we can learn to speak even when we are afraid.
"We know that when we join hands across the table of our difference, our diversity gives us great power. When we can arm ourselves with the strength and vision from all of our diverse communities, then we will in truth all be free at last."
-Audrey Lorde (Litany of Commitment, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1983)
Audre's story begins in the winter of 1934. She was born to two Caribbean immigrant parents living in New York City. In several interviews, Lorde described her childhood as always feeling like an outsider, even within her own family. The youngest of three daughters, and nearsighted to the point of being legally blind, Lorde overcame that adversity with the help of her mother. At the age of four, she was learning to read as she was learning to speak. Her mother even was teaching her to write some. These are some of the few tender memories she has of her mother as she has described her relationship with her parents to be a very cold and unfeeling one. A relationship that manifests in Lorde's later work.
Born as Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she chose to drop the "y" from her first name as a child. Lorde explains in her self-coined "biomythography" Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, that she was far more interested in creating the symmetry with the "e" ending both names. Even at a very early age, it is apparent that Audre was learning about and celebrating her "otherness" as an outsider.
Because Lorde struggled so much with communication in her young life, she found such a powerful appreciation for poetry as a means of self-expression. She wrote her very first poem when she was in eighth grade. It would be only a short few years later that she would be a published poet for the first time. She memorized a great deal of poetry and would often use it as a form of everyday communication. If asked how she was feeling, she would recite a poem. By twelve years of age, Lorde began writing her own poetry and connecting with the other "outcasts" at school.
In high school, Lorde participated in many poetry workshops sponsored by the Harlem Writers Guild. However, she always felt like an outcast from the Guild. She felt that she wasn't being accepted because she was "crazy and queer." While still attending Hunter College High School, she became involved in the student-run publication. She had written a poem for the publication, but it was rejected by a faculty member for being inappropriate. She was told that it "wasn't a good sonnet," but deep down Lorde KNEW that it WAS a good sonnet and sent it off to Seventeen Magazine. They promptly purchased and published Lorde's poem. Lorde was now a published poet for the first time...
...but definitely not the last.
1954 and 1968 were both very pivotal years for the young poet. In 1954, as a student at the University of Mexico, Lorde confirmed her identity on both a personal and artistic level declaring that she was both a poet and a lesbian. She often refers to this period of her life as a time of affirmation and renewal. In 1968, she became a writer in residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. Similar to her formative experience at the University of Mexico, this time became a creative cacoon for her. She led workshops for her young, black undergraduate students. She reaffirmed her desire to live out her "crazy and queer" identity as well as devote attention to her craft. Her collection of works, Cables to Rage, came from her time and experiences as Tougaloo. This is also where she met her romantic partner of the next 21 years, Francis Clayton.
Lorde went on to write and publish several collections of poetry and prose. She was very involved in the queer culture and activism of Greenwich Village upon her return from Tougaloo. She was even married to a gay white man and mothered 2 children... Again a woman of many hats and multitudes. She became known for speaking out against the injustices of racism, sexism, ageism, classism, and all forms of bigotry. She believed that words could be more powerful than violent actions. She believed that the source of our collective power to fight these injustices lay within our collective differences as well as our collective commonalities. She was outspoken so much so that many criticized her for her views on homogenized feminism. She eventually took up the banner of "womanist" (a term coined by Alice Walker) instead of "feminist."
Lorde used her defined identities within her work and used her own life to teach others the importance of being different. She was not ashamed to claim her identity and used it to her own creative advantage. "The House of Difference" is a phrase that originates in Lorde's identity theories. Her idea was that everyone is different from each other and it is these collective differences that make us who we are, instead of one small aspect in isolation. Focusing on all of the aspects of one's identity brings people together more than choosing one small piece to identify with. According to Lorde's essay "Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference", "the need for unity is often misnamed as a need for homogeneity." She writes: "A fear of lesbians, or of being accused of being a lesbian, has led many Black women into testifying against themselves." She was a lesbian and navigated spaces interlocking her womanhood, gayness, and blackness in ways that trumped white feminism, predominantly white gay spaces, and toxic black male masculinity. 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.
"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference -- those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older -- know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master's house as their only source of support."
-Audre Lorde (The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House,
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984)
Lorde fought fervently for her beliefs in both her activism and within the body of her own work. She was also fighting another battle, one that would claim her life at such a young age. In 1978, Lorde was first diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent a full mastectomy and for what it seemed at the time, beat the cancer. However, six years later, it is discovered that the cancer had metastasized in her liver. On November 17th, 1992, at the age of 58, cancer took her life.
.jpg)
Her life was short in the context of how long she should have lived, but she left behind a vast and meaningful legacy. Aside from the rich volumes of written work, Lorde co-founded the Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press; an establishment dedicated to publishing the voices of marginalized women. She was a key player in the Afro-German civil rights movement. She even coined the term "Afro-German." She is still an influential voice within the ongoing feminist, civil rights, and queer activism movements. The Audre Lorde Project, founded in 1994, in her name, is a Brooklyn-based organization to help LGBTQIA+ people of color. She was named state poet Laureate for New York State from 1991 until her death. She is one of the inaugural fifty American "pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes" inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall national monument...
...tbh, the list goes on and on.
During Pride, it is good to remember that Pride exists as a reminder of those that came before us, that blazed a trail so that we could walk it. Not just one riot, but so many protests, so many voices, so many words to speak the rights that we enjoy into existence. So, perhaps it might be a great idea this month to crack open a copy of Coal, Cables to Rage, or Sister Outsider and listen to some words of wisdom from beyond the grave.
I'd like to leave you all with the last recorded reading that Audrey Lorde did before she passed.
Enjoy, and Happy Pride!
Comments
Post a Comment