I’m a big bad butch dyke. I carry my substantial weight and attitude with a well-honed edge. On the surface this makes me look fearless and ready to take on anything and anyone. But like most surfaces, give it a little scratch and the truth is revealed. The current administration’s daily briefings are a grand example of the fragile surface. As for me, scratch my surface and a whole host of fears and insecurities come flying out. In fact, you’ll find a regular Pandora’s box of, for the most part, unfounded and totally unrealistic fears untested by any real experience. I am frightened of hummingbirds. Now, most people see hummingbirds as one of nature’s more enchanting creatures, with their wings flapping hundreds of times a minute. Not me. I see them as tweakers, fueled by a heavy dose of methamphetamine, ready to pluck out my eyes. I also have a long abiding fear of deer. Once again lovely, graceful, sinewy animals, a sight that makes people sigh at their beauty. I, on the other hand, feel that all the deer from here to Mosier are lined up on the side of the road, ready to dart out and hit my car. No, this has not actually happened. That fact, however, does not prevent me from driving 10 mph on the back roads of the Columbia Gorge and exhorting my clueless passengers to continue to scan for the inevitable attack of Bambi and her friends.

Selected Audre Lorde Quotes

The erotic cannot be secondhand. We must recognize and nurture the creative parts of each other without always understanding what will be created. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Hopefully, we can learn from the 60’s that we cannot afford to do our enemies work by destroying each other. There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Difference is that raw and powerful connection from which our personal power is forged. I have come to believe over and over again, that what is more important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised and misunderstood.

But one of my biggest fears is biographicphobia. This is the dread that descends upon me as I pick up a biography of someone who I admire and respect. Someone whose words and works have inspired me and helped to shape my life philosophy. I want that person’s private life to reflect their public wisdom. I don’t want to encounter clay feet or sordid tales of wire hangers (shades of Mommie Dearest) or worse — babbling endorsements of war, marriage as a sacred union between a man and a woman or some other kind of social idiocy.

I can imagine that Alexis DeVeaux could have experienced some of that fear when she decided to write a biography (the first biography) of Audre Lorde. De Veaux spent 10 years walking in the streets where Lorde walked: Harlem, Staten Island, St. Croix, Grenada. She talked to the people that Lorde talked with, and fought with and loved and left and strategized and agonized with. DeVeaux had sole access to the artifacts of Lorde’s life; sixty unpublished journals and boxes of memorabilia: letters, copies of audio and video-tapes, medical records and to-do lists. DeVeaux was also faced with the awesome task of dissecting truths. Writers and other creative souls do not shy away from fictionalizing their life stories, blending fact with fiction, not for mere deception but for the sake of telling a good story. DeVeaux was not deterred by the complexities and the seemingly contradictorial nature of Audre Lorde’s truths and she has crafted an extraordinary telling of the life of an extraordinary woman in Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde (2004, Norton).

Audre Lorde was born in Harlem in 1934, the youngest daughter of Caribbean immigrants. Her mother, a powerful force in her life, held deep negative feelings toward darker-skinned black people while her father viewed himself as a “race man” and supported Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” movement. Lorde’s school years were spent in primarily white schools and it is here that she began to experience and grapple with the theme that would haunt and shape her for the rest of her life, that of being an outsider. It was also at an early age that Lorde discovered the seductive power and energy of poetry. Her poetic gift was initially shaped by her fascination with Keats, Bryon, Shelley and Edna St. Vincent Millay and Shelley and Edna St. Vincent Millay and her early writings reflect that fascination.

Lorde spent her 20’s and 30’s teaching, writing and finding her poetic and political voice. It was also a time of exploring a sexual philosophy, which she called the “new nameless country.” A way of loving and living not bound by any scripted model. Her personal life was chaotically passionate as she had both women and men lovers even while married for many years to a gay man. In 1970, divorced with two children, she moved in with the woman who would be her soul, thought not sole, partner for many years. She also found a political and cultural home that Lorde felt would welcome all her identities — radical, black, lesbian. That home was the women’s liberation movement.

The Feminist Movement gave birth to many strong and powerful voices. It also created venues for those voices to be heard or read. Though some of Lorde’s early work had been published in the Harlem Writers Quarterly and other publications focusing on African American writers, any poems with even a thread of lesbianism woven through the verses were rejected. But the emergence of feminist publications such as Amazon Quarterly, 13th Moon, Aphra, Sinister Wisdom, Ms. Magazine, and Chrysalis gave Lorde space on those pages to bring her whole self to an expanded audience. And it wasn’t only in publications, but at women’s bookstores, conferences, and coffee houses which Lorde, along with poets such as Adrienne Rich, Pat Parker, Judy Grahn, and Michelle Cliff found a welcoming place for the passionate and powerful words which shaped a generation of lesbian/feminists.

Selected Works of Audre Lorde

The Cancer Journals Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches Zami, A New Spelling of My Name Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities

Audre Lorde described herself as “black, lesbian, feminist, mother, poet warrior” and the women’s movement felt her poet warrior fierceness as Lorde, in one her better-known essays “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” exposed the racism within the movement. This racism, Lorde wrote, “perpetuated black women’s invisibility and had links to the failure to bridge differences between women in spite of notions of sisterhood.” Lorde went on to say that the issue of white women’s racism was left to feminist women of color to articulate, generally at the risk of suffering white women’s guilt, tears, and anger. “Perhaps...I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself — a Black woman warrior poet doing my work — come to ask you, are you doing yours?” The essay ended those words still used today, “your silence will not protect you.”

Audre Lorde continued to create powerfully crafted poems, essays and books until she died in 1992 with cancer. She also maintained her intentional activism working to help us see a world where differences did not divide us but served to unite us and make us strong. Her life, though too short, changed our world. Alexis DeVeaux’s intent in writing Warrior Poet was to contribute to the extraordinary legacy of Audre Lorde and to contribute to an understanding of her life. She has succeeded. Warrior Poet allows us to see the frailties and complexities of a very human woman who gave so much, not only in the literary world, but also in our continuing struggle for a just world. Audre Lorde did have clay feet. But the truth is what she did and what she gave to all of us is what really matters. I must go and buy a hummingbird feeder.

I want you to read this book. I want you to have this book so you will be inspired to just action. I want you to be one of those people who has the courage to bring up uncomfortable issues in your organizations and groups. I want you to continue Audre Lorde’s legacy. So send a note and tell me why you want to read this book and I’ll draw out a name and mail it to you. Write to: Warrior Poet, The Portland Alliance, 2807 SE Stark, Portland, Or. 97214.

Jack Danger is the Portland Alliance book editor.