Audre Lorde (1934-1992)
Audre Lorde was a formidable poet, feminist, scholar and global leaderl Her first volume of poetry, First Cities, was published, the same year she left her job as a head librarian at Town School Library in New York City in 1968. Lorde taught a poetry workshop at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, witnessing first-hand the deep racial tensions in the South. There she would publish her second volume of poetry entitled Cables to Rage (1970), which took on themes of love, deceit and family, and which also addressed her own sexuality in the poem, “Martha.” She would later teach at John Jay College and Hunter College in New York.
Lorde’s third volume of poetry, From a Land Where Other People Live (1973), earned a lot of praise and was nominated for a National Book Award. In this volume she explored issues of identity as well as concerns about global issues. Her next work, New York Head Shop and Museum (1975), was more overtly political than her earlier poem collections.
Other successful collections from Lorde include From a Land Where Other People Live (1973) and The Black Unicorn (1978). Lorde also wrote the memoirs The Cancer Journals (1980) and A Burst of Light (1988).
Rainbow Honor Walk celebrates this giant of poetry, prose scholarship and feminism.