Lorde was diagnosed with breast cancer and chronicled her struggles in her first prose collection, The Cancer Journals (Spinsters, Ink, 1980), which won the Gay Caucus Book of the Year award for 1981. Gilbert noted not only Lorde’s ability to express outrage, but also that she was capable of “of rare and, paradoxically, loving jeremiads.” Poet Adrienne Rich said of The Black Unicorn that “Lorde writes as a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a Lesbian, a feminist, a visionary poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity.” Her other volumes include Chosen Poems Old and New (1982) and Our Dead Behind Us (1986), both published by W. Norton released her collection Coal and, shortly thereafter, published The Black Unicorn (1995). Whereas much of her earlier work focused on the transience of love, this book marked her most political work to date. In 1974, she published New York Head Shot and Museum (Broadside Press). The First Cities was quickly followed with Cables to Rage (Paul Breman, 1970) and From a Land Where Other People Live (Broadside Press, 1973), which was nominated for a National Book Award. At Tougaloo, she also met her long-term partner, Frances Clayton.

In the same year, she became the writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College in Mississippi, where she discovered a love of teaching. Her first volume of poems, The First Cities (Poets Press), was published in 1968. They had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathon, before divorcing in 1970. She served as a librarian in New York public schools from 1961 through 1968. Lorde received her BA from Hunter College and an MLS from Columbia University. While she was still in high school, her first poem appeared in Seventeen magazine. The youngest of three sisters, she was raised in Manhattan and attended Catholic school. Her parents were immigrants from Grenada. Poet, essayist, and novelist Audre Lorde was born Audrey Geraldine Lorde on February 18, 1934, in New York City.

Audre lorde a new spelling of my name