Audre Lorde

#AudreLorde (February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992): Born in New York City to parents from Barbados and the Grenadines, Lorde dropped the “y” from the name her parents gave her when she was a child, claiming that she enjoyed the symmetry of the name she would become famous with. A writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist who described herself as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” Lorde advocated throughout her entire life for those living on the edges of society. In describing non-intersectional feminism she said, “those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.” Earning her BA from #HunterCollege and MLS from #ColumbiaUniversity, Lorde was a librarian for #NYCPublicSchools throughout the 1960s before teaching as poet-in-residence at #TougalooCollege. She published collections of her poetry in the late-1960s and into the 1970s, and worked tirelessly in movements of feminism, Black culture and civil rights, and LGBTQIA equality by working with literary publications and speaking at public rallies. Her most famous work, #SisterOutsider, explored intersectionality as a source of strength rather than division among marginalized groups. She fought breast cancer from the late-1970s until her death from the disease in 1992. Just before her death she took part in an African naming ceremony, where she took the name #GambaAdisa which means “Warrior: She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.” #PrideMonth#LGBTQIA#LGBTQIAPride#Pride#LegendsOfPride#YouCannotEraseUs