Audre Lorde

Self described as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Audre Lorde was a prolific writer, best known for poetry in works like Coal and The Black Unicorn, her “biomythography” Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and her nonfiction work, The Cancer Journals, which documented her battle with breast cancer.  Lorde was a civil rights activist and feminist and often used her writing as a space to explore and confront racism, sexism, and homophobia. Lorde was highly critical of 1960s feminists who overwhelmingly focused on the experiences of white, heterosexual, middle-class women to shape their political agendas. Lorde argued that women were far too complex and their experiences far too disparate for a single feminist agenda. She also criticized black men for often perpetuating gender inequality. In the early 1980s, Lorde helped found Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. Lorde died in 1992 after a 14-year struggle with cancer.