Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was a noted Afro-American writer, educationist, feminist, and civil rights activist. Born a rebel, she never had easy relationship at home, developing friendship with a group of ‘outcasts’ at school. Starting to write poems in her early teens, she supported her college education doing odd jobs and later began her career as a librarian. She found teaching as satisfying as writing poems and taught English in several colleges. All the while, she continued to write, publishing her first book of poems around the age of 34, which was quickly followed by others. Calling herself a “black, feminist, lesbian, mother and poet”, she also wrote in prose, lashing out at the injustice meted out to the marginalized. However, her anger was never destructive. Throughout her life, she influenced great many people; both men and women. A warrior at heart, she never learned to give up, fighting for rights till her death from stomach cancer at the age of 58.