Audre Lorde: Black, Feminist, Lesbian, Mother, Poet

Audre Lorde: Black, Feminist, Lesbian, Mother, Poet

Warrior Poet: A Biography of Anidre Lorde By Alexis De Veaux (W. W. Norton, $29.95)

For one of her prose books, poet Audre Lorde coined the term "biomythography." The book's title, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), itself bristled with the challenge of an original self-definition. "Zami" was Caribbean French patois for "woman friends" - possibly lesbians. Biomythography was to be a new literary genre, empowered by feminism, that exploded male-centered definitions of history, mythology, autobiography and fiction. Throughout her career, Lorde pursued new words to counter fixed definitions. And she was uniquely positioned to do so.

Alexis De Veaux's Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde charts the life of a gifted American writer who traversed American racial, sexual and social identities as few have. Lorde, author of poetry volumes such as The Black Unicorn (1978) and Coal (1976), as well as important feminist criticism came into herself in the 1960s and early 1970s, a time of breaking down conservative social conventions, of marginalized identities declaring their right to sovereignty.

But Lorde was a revolutionary within the revolution. While other activists and artists who considered themselves radicals had their hands full promoting Black power or the feminist revolution, Lorde promoted Black feminist power. When Black feminism surged, Lorde emphasized the need for Black lesbian feminism. She described herself as a "black, feminist, lesbian, mother, poet warrior."

She could also have added to the list first-generation immigrant and cancer patient. In The Cancer Journals, published in 1980, Lorde addressed the traumatic experience of having a mastectomy. Breast cancer was the illness that finally killed Lorde in 1992, at age 58, after a 14-year battle.

The youngest of three sisters, Lorde was given a choice to sink, or swim in a sea of identity confusion. Her parents, immigrants from the Caribbean island of Grenada, never quite adapted to life in the Unites States. Her mother was deeply suspicious both of Whites and darker skinned Black people. Problematic aspects of Lorde's personality "had come highly recommended by a mother who taught her never to trust White people or anyone darker than herself."

Little about Lorde was "typical." She expressed an early interest in the arts: she wrote poetry as a child and supported herself first as a librarian, then as a teacher. Before "coming out" as a lesbian, Lorde, at 27, married a White lawyer, Ed Rollins, who was also gay. Both partners were aware of their sexual orientations prior to the 1962 union, but believed they could sustain a marriage based upon mutual respect. They had two children, but the marriage soon fizzled. Lorde's later long-term partnership with Frances clayton, a White behavioral psychologist, provided an early example of a "non-traditional" family unit - two lesbian women, openly and successfully parenting two children.

The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s jump-started Lorde's career. Her third book was published by Dudley Randall's Broadside Press. Publication in turn opened the door to better academic positions, poet-in-residence appointments, the admiration of less vocal lesbians and the friendship of famous White feminists such as Adrienne Rich. Lorde spoke at the first national March on Washington for Lesbians and Gays in 1979 and was for many years the poetry editor of the feminist literary journal Chrysalis.

Lorde believed in unity, not uniformity. She advised that we should "join hands across the table of our differences" because "then we will in truth be free at last." To her, pretended homogeneity equaled underhanded oppression. case in point: a feminist movement that spoke self-righteously of the interests of women, when in actuality it promoted the issues of White women.

Warrior Poet, written with access to Lorde's private journals and taped interviews conducted by Gloria Joseph, a professor of social science and Lorde's last companion, occasionally reads like gossip. Lorde's politics often put her in the position of being a truth-teller, a philosopher-sage.

But De Veaux's biography reveals Lorde not living up to her own advice. Lorde envied others' successes, in particular that of Adrienne Rich, and sought casual lovers to assuage her low self-esteem. She gravitated toward the company of White women, where she was the sole Black and thus privileged with the voice of authority.

During a Black feminist retreat, Lorde wrote in her journal, "I don't fit in with this group." A part of the problem, De Veaux writes, was that the group "promoted an identity politics as Black women and, unlike the groups of White women Lorde primarily interacted with, she had no racialized upper hand in their company."

With Warrior Poet, De Veaux, chair of the women's studies department at the University of Buffalo (SUNY), has penned a fine biography of a woman who spoke from an understanding of so many categories and with a poetic voice that spoke to so many.

Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is a poet and critic. he lives in Charleston, S.C.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Mar/Apr 2004
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