The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde

Joseph, Ph.D., who described herself in the same manner as Lorde did: a black woman of West Indian parentage, born and raised in the United States. Croix to live with her final partner, Gloria I. By then she had entered a partnership with Frances Clayton, a white professor whom she had met at Tougaloo college, and who 'othermothered' Lorde's children equally.

Lorde separated from Rollins in 1970 and divorced him a few years later. Her poem, 'And what about the Children,' is an ironic statement about relatives' 'dire predictions,' 'wild grim speculations,' and comments on the texture of their hair ( The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, p. Lorde married Edward Rollins, a white lawyer, in 1962. She was also invited to become a writer-in-residence at Tougaloo, an historically black college in Mississippi, where she discovered her passion for teaching, and in 1968 began her lifelong career as a professor of literature at City College in New York (CCNY). Her first book, The First Cities (1968), brought her to the attention of feminists, who invited her to read the work to female audiences, thus launching her into women's movement activities, where she became a spokeswoman and bridge builder. Throughout her life), and when she was fifteen, her first love poem (to a boy) was published in Seventeen magazine.

She began writing in a journal when she was about twelve (an almost daily habit Īt four years of age Lorde spoke her first words: 'I want to read.' (Tate, p. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (1997) contains ten of her eleven books of poetry ( Under-song is not included). Five of the twenty-five poems in her first book are written to Genny.

For the next four years, Lorde wrote a memorial poem to her each spring, and in speeches and writings throughout her life, mourned her loss. 'Genny' committed suicide at age sixteen. In high school she found a few friends but Genevieve, the only other black student was her best friend. Rejected and isolated in her predominantly white Catholic elementary school, Lorde handled racism alone. Startled by the unexpected and blatant racism they encountered in the United States, her parents attempted to shield their children by never mentioning it. 17 November 1992) writer, activist.īorn in Harlem at the height of the Great Depression, Audre Lorde was the youngest of three daughters of immigrant parents from the Caribbean island of Grenada.

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre Lorde