Audre Lorde

Lorde's father Byron was born on April 20, 1898, in Barbados. Her mother, Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, was born in 1902 on the island Carriacou in Grenada. Lorde's mother was a light-skinned Black woman but sometimes passed as Spanish, for employment opportunities. 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. After their immigration, the new family settled in Harlem, a diverse neighborhood in upper Manhattan, New York. Lorde was the youngest of three daughters. Lorde was nearsighted to the point of being legally blind. At the age of four she learned to read at the same time she learned to talk, with the help of Augusta Braxton Baker, then children's librarian at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Her mother taught her to write at around the same time.

Born 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.

Lorde's relationship with her parents was difficult from a young age. She spent very little time with her father and mother, who were both busy maintaining their property management business in the tumultuous economy after the Great Depression. When she did see them, they were often cold or emotionally distant. In particular, Lorde's relationship with her mother, who was deeply suspicious of people with darker skin than hers (which Lorde had) and the outside world in general, was characterized by "tough love" and strict adherence to family rules. Lorde's difficult relationship with her mother figured prominently in her later poems, such as Coal's "Story Books on a Kitchen Table".

As a child, Lorde struggled with communication, and came to appreciate the power of poetry as a form of expression. She even described herself as thinking in poetry. She memorized a great deal of poetry, and would use it to communicate, to the extent that, "If asked how she was feeling, Audre would reply by reciting a poem." Around the age of twelve, she began writing her own poetry and connecting with others at her school who were considered "outcasts", as she felt she was.

Raised Catholic, Lorde attended parochial schools before moving on to Hunter College High School, a secondary school for intellectually gifted students. Poet Diane di Prima was a classmate and friend. While attending Hunter, Lorde published her first poem in Seventeen magazine after her school's literary journal rejected it for being inappropriate. Also in high school, Lorde participated in poetry workshops sponsored by the Harlem Writers Guild, but noted that she always felt like somewhat of an outcast from the Guild. She felt she was not accepted because she "was both crazy and queer but [they thought] I would grow out of it all". Lorde graduated from Hunter College High School.

Zami places her father's death from a stroke around New Year's 1953.

In 1954, she spent a pivotal year as a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, a period she described as a time of affirmation and renewal. During this time, she confirmed her identity on personal and artistic levels as both a lesbian and a poet. On her return to New York, Lorde attended Hunter College, and graduated in the class of 1959. While there, she worked as a librarian, continued writing, and became an active participant in the gay culture of Greenwich Village. She furthered her education at the Columbia University School of Library Service, earning a master's degree in library science in 1961. During this period, she worked as a public librarian in nearby Mount Vernon, New York.

In 1968 Lorde was writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi.

Lorde's time at Tougaloo College, like her year at the National University of Mexico, was a formative experience for her as an artist. She led workshops with her young, black undergraduate students, many of whom were eager to discuss the civil rights issues of that time. Through her interactions with her students, she reaffirmed her desire not only to live out her "crazy and queer" identity, but also to devote attention to the formal aspects of her craft as a poet. Her book of poems, Cables to Rage, came out of her time and experiences at Tougaloo.

From 1972 to 1987, Lorde resided on Staten Island. During that time, in addition to writing and teaching she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.

In 1977, Lorde became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

Lorde taught in the Education Department at Lehman College from 1969 to 1970, then as a professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (both part of the City University of New York, CUNY) from 1970 to 1981. There, she fought for the creation of a black studies department. In 1981, she went on to teach at her alma mater, Hunter College (also CUNY), as the distinguished Thomas Hunter chair. As a queer Black woman, she was an outsider in a white male dominated field and her experiences in this environment deeply influenced her work. New fields such as African American studies and women's studies advanced the topics that scholars were addressing and garnered attention to groups that had previously been rarely discussed. With this newfound academic environment, Lorde was inspired to not only write poetry but also essays and articles about queer, feminist, and African American studies.

In 1980, together with Barbara Smith and Cherríe Moraga, she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of color.

In 1981, Lorde was among the founders of the Women's Coalition of St. Croix, an organization dedicated to assisting women who have survived sexual abuse and intimate partner violence. In the late 1980s, she also helped establish Sisterhood in Support of Sisters (SISA) in South Africa to benefit black women who were affected by apartheid and other forms of injustice.

In 1985, Audre Lorde was a part of a delegation of black women writers who had been invited to Cuba. The trip was sponsored by The Black Scholar and the Union of Cuban Writers. She embraced the shared sisterhood as black women writers. They visited Cuban poets Nancy Morejón and Nicolás Guillén. They discussed whether the Cuban revolution had truly changed racism and the status of lesbians and gays there.

In 1962, Lorde married attorney Edwin Rollins, who was a White, gay man. Audre had been living openly as a lesbian since college, however due to homophobic discrimination, they both decided to remain closeted. Audre and Edwin maintained an open relationship, allowing each other to pursue same-sex relationships. She and Rollins divorced in 1970 after having two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan. In 1966, Lorde became head librarian at Town School Library in New York City, where she remained until 1968.

During her time in Mississippi in 1968, she met Frances Clayton, a White lesbian and professor of psychology who became her romantic partner until 1989. They raised Lorde's children together, and they lived openly as a lesbian couple.

Lorde was briefly romantically involved with the sculptor and painter Mildred Thompson after meeting her in Nigeria at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC 77). The two were involved during the time that Thompson lived in Washington, D.C.

Lorde and her final life partner, Black feminist Dr. Gloria Joseph, resided together on Joseph's native land of St. Croix. Lorde and Joseph had been seeing each other since 1981, and after Lorde's liver cancer diagnosis, she officially left Clayton for Joseph, moving to St. Croix in 1986. The couple remained together until Lorde's death. Together they founded several organizations such as the Che Lumumba School for Truth, Women's Coalition of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa, and Doc Loc Apiary.