Lorde's relationship with her parents was difficult from a young age. She wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade.īorn as Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she chose to drop the "y" from her first name while still a child, explaining in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name that she was more interested in the artistic symmetry of the "e"-endings in the two side-by-side names "Audre Lorde" than in spelling her name the way her parents had intended.
At the age of four, she learned to talk while she learned to read, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind and the youngest of three daughters (her two older sisters were named Phyllis and Helen), Lorde grew up hearing her mother's stories about the West Indies. Lorde's father was darker than the Belmar family liked, and they only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron's charm, ambition, and persistence. Lorde's mother was of mixed ancestry but could pass for Spanish, which was a source of pride for her family. Her father, Frederick Byron Lorde (known as Byron), hailed from Barbados and her mother, Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, was Grenadian and was born on the island of Carriacou. Lorde was born in New York City on Februto Caribbean immigrants. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity. As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation.
She was a self-described "black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia." Īs a poet, she is well known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. Audre Lorde ( / ˈ ɔː d r i ˈ l ɔːr d/ born Audrey Geraldine Lorde Febru– November 17, 1992) was an American writer, womanist, radical feminist, professor, philosopher and civil rights activist.
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