Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a self-described Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet who dedicated her life and creative work to confronting racism, sexism, classism, and anti-gay bias. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Hunter College and her Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Columbia University. Throughout the 1960s, she was a librarian in New York Public schools. She launched an extensive teaching career as the poet-in-residence at Tougaloo College before teaching at Lehman College and later at John Jay College.

As a renowned poet, essayist, and feminist scholar, she was published numerous times during her lifetime, as well as posthumously. She began her writing career as a poet, having published her first poem in a magazine while she was still in high school. Lorde also published volumes of prose, the most recognized of which are The Cancer Journals, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, and Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches.

Lorde’s self-understanding as Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet are integral to Sister Outsider. In “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Differences,” she notes:

As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.