Audre Lorde described herself as a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” and her life embodied these identities in every way. Through her work and activism, she confronted racism, sexism, homophobia, and class-based oppression, using her voice to demand justice and equity. Her poetry became a fierce weapon of resistance, while her essays critiqued mainstream feminism for its failure to consider race and class. Lorde championed the power of sharing personal experiences and advocated for solidarity among marginalized communities. Her work remains a cornerstone for intersectional approaches to social justice.

Born on February 18, 1934, in New York City to Grenadian immigrant parents, Lorde was the youngest of three sisters. Growing up, she faced the challenges of navigating her race, gender, and class in a society that often sought to define her as “other.” But Lorde refused to let her identities isolate her. She believed these differences were not barriers but strengths, and she encouraged collective empowerment across diverse communities.

Her early encounters with marginalization became the foundation of her work. Lorde began writing poetry at the age of 12 while attending a Catholic school in Manhattan. Her first professional piece was published in Seventeen magazine, though her school’s literary journal had rejected it for being “inappropriate.” In 1954, she studied at the National University of Mexico in Cuernavaca, a transformative year where she fully embraced her identity as both a lesbian and a poet. After earning her BA from Hunter College in 1959, Lorde worked as a librarian in New York City schools during the 1960s. She also started a family with Edwin Rollins, a white, gay man, with whom she had two children before their divorce in 1970.

In 1972, Lorde became a poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi. The experience of being a Black, queer woman in predominantly white academic spaces further shaped her perspectives and activism. It was here that she met her life partner, Frances Clayton.

Lorde’s work was deeply rooted in the belief that naming one’s experiences is an essential step toward dismantling oppression. Her poem Power, written after a police officer was acquitted of killing a 10-year-old Black boy, captures her raw anger and pain. Long before the term “intersectionality” was coined in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Lorde was addressing how race, gender, class, and sexual orientation were intertwined systems of oppression that couldn’t be fought in isolation.