The legacy of Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde is a name that not many people know, but for those of us who do, we know it as the name of a woman connected to almost every sociological and political movement from the 1960s and onward. Her words, her analysis and her conveyance were the powerful means that articulated not only feminist theory, but intersectional and anti-racist theory as well.

In her time, Lorde was the radical black lesbian feminist who defied and broke down the archaic heterosexual, classist and racist notions of “white feminism,” feminist thought and advocacy that catered solely to the narrow and privileged experiences of heterosexual upper class white women.

Her ideas swiftly pushed feminist scholarship and practice into the intersectional sphere. Intersectionality is a theory that describes the reality of how we all experience life differently based on our positions on axes of race, class, gender and sexuality.

Lorde once said that she was a mother, lesbian, black and a feminist, or she was a black lesbian feminist, who was also a mother, depending on the day. She believed her identity to be in constant flux depending on the circumstance or moment, a major point to the development of intersectional theory.

While one part of her identity would take precedent, Lorde stressed the point of interconnectedness between all of the facets of her identity. 

She was a black, lesbian woman not black, a lesbian, and a woman. These identities interact and influence each other. They are inseparable. That is intersectional theory, and that is Lorde’s legacy.

This articulation of intersectional identities and intersectional theory became paramount in her work. Lorde’s discussion of intersectionality required a broad kind of accessibility. Thus her legacy, this discourse on intersectionality, became even more so because of broad accessibility: that Lorde was writing to the academic and the third world women alike.

Knowing and understanding her intersectional identities became so important to her and to her philosophy that it was imbued in everything she wrote and did.

Writing both narrative and academic pieces, Lorde was able to get her thinking across to diverse audiences, whether they were academic or not. In works like “Zami” and “Master’s Tools,” the former  narrative and the latter academic, Lorde was able to communicate the complicated blending of blackness, lesbianism and feminism in herself and in others, creating spaces of discussion.

Her poetry also helped to break feminism out of the consciousness-raising groups of the 60s and 70s, in the ivory towers of colleges and universities. At times, her poetry served to bridge the divide between women in these groups and to largely working-class women of color advocating for themselves and their communities.

It is in this discussion of Lorde and her legacy that is becomes kind of unfortunate that we must argue for her legacy and expose her relevance. The reason why her legacy is shrouded is the same reason why we only hear about Lorde and her work in classes that are either black-centric (meaning they focus specifically on the legacy of black people) or woman-centric. These are the classes that are in the minority. Truly ask yourself, when was the last time you took a class that was exclusively focused on the black perspective and the black experience?

Really this all comes down to the fact that despite the groundbreaking scholarship and art that people of color have contributed to our society, their work often isn’t valued by the white majority that dominates most of our life experiences.

So as Black History Month winds down, think of black individuals like Lorde, who have irrevocably changed the way we think about race, gender, sexuality or anything else. Keep their legacies alive and on our minds longer than the 28 days in the shortest month of the year.