The Cancer Journals

Audre Lorde was a poet, essayist, activist, and memoirist whose writings on lesbian feminism and race were integral to second-wave feminism. Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934 to Grenadian immigrant parents. She attended Hunter High School, where she edited the school’s literary magazine. She published her first poem, which had been rejected by an English teacher, in Seventeen magazine. She later attended Hunter College, where she trained to become a librarian.

Born Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she dropped the “y” from her name during childhood. Lorde married Edwin Rollins, a white gay man, in 1962, one year after earning her master’s degree in library science. Together, they had two children, before divorcing in 1970. Lorde worked as a librarian at Town School in Manhattan. She wrote poetry around the same time and taught English at Hunter College. She released her first poetry collection, The First Cities, in 1968. This was followed by 11 additional volumes, including her most notable works, Coal (1976) and The Black Unicorn (1978). She also wrote five prose collections, including The Cancer Journals, which won the 1982 Gay Caucus Book of the Year Award.