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Audre Lorde
Date: 1981
Caption: Portrait of writer Audre Lorde at work at her desk, surrounded by papers, books, and posters. This image was taken in 1981, around the time that she was writing her autobiographical book Zami.
By the 1980s, Audre Lorde was working full-time as a writer. She had published essays and poetry. She had also been fighting cancer, which she was diagnosed with in 1978.
This photograph shows her at work at an office. In these years she was one of the founders of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which was dedicated to publishing Black feminist writings.
In her autobiographical work Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde recounts how she learned to read not in school, but at a public library in Harlem with a kind Black woman librarian named Augusta Baker. She also writes about her experiences in the classroom as a child with a vision disability. The school system’s approach to disability meant that Lorde was placed in separate classes from her non-disabled peers. Audre Lorde noticed that her teachers had low expectations of her, despite her abilities. She described this as part of her first “rude awakening” about school, that “Ability had nothing to do with expectation.”1.
She also writes about her teenage and young adult years. She describes her friendships in high school and college, where she was one of a small group of Black students. She also recounts her developing identity as a lesbian, including ways that she felt she did and did not feel at home in queer spaces in Greenwich Village and elsewhere.
There are many photographs of Audre Lorde, in public and private settings. See, for example, this photograph from her family collection, this photograph of her giving a public speech, and this photograph of her as a teacher.
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Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Watertown, MA: Persephone Press, 1982), Chapter 3. ↩︎
Categories: Manhattan, higher education
Tags: women's activism, the arts, photography, imagery, and visual representation, Black people, queer people, Disabled people
This item is part of "Audre Lorde and Student Protest at CUNY" in "Black and Latina Women’s Educational Activism"
Item Details
Date: 1981
Creator: Joan E. Biren
Source: National Portrait Gallery
Copyright: Under copyright. Used with permission.
How to cite: “Audre Lorde,” Joan E. Biren, in New York City Civil Rights History Project, Accessed: [Month Day, Year], https://nyccivilrightshistory.org/gallery/audre-lorde-portrait.
Questions to Consider
- What clues does this photo offer about who Audre Lorde was and what she cared about? What do you notice about the space, the items in the space, an Lorde’s physical position?
- Assuming that Lorde gave permission for this image to be taken and shared, what does it tell us about how she wanted to be seen in the world?
- Compare this image to some of the other images linked in the text above. Which would you choose to represent Lorde, and why?
References
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