奥德雷·洛德

奥德雷·洛德（英语：Audre Lorde，1934年2月18日—1992年11月17日）是美国作家、女权主义者、图书馆员和民权运动家。她自称“黑人、女同、社会主义者、母亲、战士、诗人”，反对种族主义、性别主义、阶级主义、资本主义、异性恋主义和恐同等现象。

作为一名诗人，她用她的诗作表达了她对社会不公正现象的愤怒和愤慨。她的诗歌和散文主要涉及与民权、女权主义、女同性恋、疾病和残疾有关的问题，以及对黑人女性身份的探讨。1989年，奥德雷·洛德获得美国图书奖。奥德雷·洛德晚年因罹患肝癌去世。

早期生活

洛德出生于纽约市，她的父亲来自巴巴多斯，母亲是来自卡里亚库岛的格林纳达人，弗雷德里克-拜伦-洛德和琳达-格特鲁德-贝尔玛-洛德定居在哈莱姆。

Audre Lorde ( AW-dree LORD; born Audrey Geraldine Lorde; February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet, and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet" who dedicated her life and talents to confronting all forms of injustice and oppression. She believed that there could be "no hierarchy of oppressions" among "those who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children".

As a poet, she is well known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life. She was the recipient of national and international awards and the founding member of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation. Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness, disability, and the exploration of Black female identity.

Early life

Lorde's father Byron was born on April 20, 1898, in Barbados. Her mother, Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, was born in 1902 on the island Carriacou in Grenada. Lorde's mother was a light-skinned Black woman but sometimes passed as Spanish, for employment opportunities. Lorde's father was darker than the Belmar family liked, and they only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron's charm, ambition, and persistence. After their immigration, the new family settled in Harlem, a diverse neighborhood in upper Manhattan, New York. Lorde was the youngest of three daughters. Lorde was nearsighted to the point of being legally blind. At the age of four she learned to read at the same time she learned to talk, with the help of Augusta Braxton Baker, then children's librarian at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library. Her mother taught her to write at around the same time.

Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she chose to drop the "y" from her first name while still a child, explaining in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name that she was more interested in the artistic symmetry of the "e"-endings in the two side-by-side names "Audre Lorde" than in spelling her name the way her parents had intended.

Lorde's relationship with her parents was difficult from a young age. She spent very little time with her father and mother, who were both busy maintaining their property management business in the tumultuous economy after the Great Depression. When she did see them, they were often cold or emotionally distant. In particular, Lorde's relationship with her mother, who was deeply suspicious of people with darker skin than hers (which Lorde had) and the outside world in general, was characterized by "tough love" and strict adherence to family rules. Lorde's difficult relationship with her mother figured prominently in her later poems, such as Coal's "Story Books on a Kitchen Table".

As a child, Lorde struggled with communication, and came to appreciate the power of poetry as a form of expression. She even described herself as thinking in poetry. She memorized a great deal of poetry, and would use it to communicate, to the extent that, "If asked how she was feeling, Audre would reply by reciting a poem." Around the age of twelve, she began writing her own poetry and connecting with others at her school who were considered "outcasts", as she felt she was.