Works by
Audre Lorde
(Writer)
[1934 - 1992]

Poetry

• The First Cities (1968)

• Cables To Rage (1970)

• From A Land Where Other People Live (1973)

• The New York Head Shop And Museum (1974)

• Coal (1976)

• Between Ourselves (1976)

• The Black Unicorn: Poems (1978)

• Our Dead Behind Us: Poems (1986)

• Undersong: Chosen Poems Old and New (1992) -- Winner, 1992 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry

• The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems 1987-1992 (1993) -- Winner, 1993 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry
  39 poems written between 1987 and 1992 by the woman Adrienne Rich has called, "a major American poet whose concerns are international, and whose words have left their mark on many lives."

• The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde (1997)
  Now available for the first time, the collected poems of Audre Lorde, one of this country's most important and influential voices. Gathered here is the complete oeuvre of Audre Lorde's poetry, a poet whom Robin Morgan describes as "sinewy, lyrical, celebratory even in the face of death, and as always, political in the best sense." This collection is the first to include, along with other volumes, three of Lorde's early, previously unavailable works: The New York Head Shop and Museum, Cables to Rage, and From a Land Where Other People Live, books that in the author's own words detail "a linguistic and emotional tour through the conflicts, fears, and hopes of the worlds I have inhabited." The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde celebrates the undeniable voice of a woman who, according to Adrienne Rich, wrote as "a Black woman, a mother, a daughter, a lesbian, a visionary; poems of elemental wildness and healing, nightmare and lucidity . . . a poetry which extends beyond white Western politics, beyond the anger and wisdom of Black America. . . . These are poems which blaze and pulse on the page." This collection will provide for Lorde's readers, both old and new, proof of this poet's lasting power.

Other

• The Uses Of The Erotic: The Erotic As Power (1978) with Camille Bonzani, Illustrator

• The Cancer Journals (1980)
  "First published in 1980, this new edition brings together posthumous tributes to Lorde from such writers and poets as Margaret Randall, Jewelle Gomez, and Barbara Smith, among others. The forthrightness and ferocity with which Audre Lorde greeted every social injustice is in full force in this courageous exploration of her breast cancer and mastectomy. Using the journal, memoir, and essay forms, Lorde gives voice to her "feelings and thoughts about the travesty of prosthesis, the pain of amputation, the function of cancer in a profit economy, confrontation with mortality, the strength of women loving, and the power and rewards of self-conscious living." Lorde powerfully weaves together the three literary forms, allowing her to leap from raw expressions of pain to her inimitably astute social observations.
  
  Lorde began writing her journal entries six months after her radical mastectomy; they illustrate her process of integrating the crisis into her life, retelling her experience from detection to follow-up therapies. Lorde's most passionate battle was waged against silence. "This is it, Audre," Lorde wrote. "You're on your own." Where was the model? she asked, seeking another voice to speak to her experience. In The Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde has given us a rich, powerful model that is, alas, still relevant." -- Amazon.com

• Zami, A New Spelling Of My Name (1982) -- #10 of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Novels.

• Sister Outsider: Essays And Speeches (1984)

• I Am Your Sister (1985)
  Black women organizing across sexualities.

• Burst of Light (1988)
  Journals about her fight with breast cancer.

• Need: A Chorale For Black Women Voices (1990)

• Family Matters (2005), Ann Smith and Larry Smith, eds.
  POEMS OF: Elders—Birth—Children—Couples—Parenting—Family Portraits—Family Life—Aging—Death
  
  POEMS BY: Elders: Louise Bogan, e.e. cummings, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Galway Kinnell, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, Edgar Lee Masters, Kenneth Patchen, Theodore Roethke, Muriel Rukeyser, William Carlos Williams, James Wright
  
  Contemporaries: Nin Andrews, Maggie Anderson, Antler, Ellen Bass, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Laura Treacy Bentley, Abigail Beckel, CL Bledsoe, Don Bogen, Allen Braden, Jeanne Bryner, Gregory Byrd, Neil Carpathias, Richard Carr, Johnson Cheu, Daryl Ngee Chinn, David Citino, Paola Corso, Alice Cone, Barbara Crooker, Thomas Rain Crowe, Jim Daniels, Kate Daniels, Todd Davis, Susan Elbe, Ann Fisher-Wirth, Diane Gilliam Fisher, Kathleen Fraser, Allen Frost, Richard Garcia, David Lee Garrison, Suzannah Gilman, William Greenway, Tina Mozelle Harris, Joy Harjo, Steven Haven, Rasma Haidri, David Hassler, Michael Hettich, Marianna Hofer, Holly Hughes, Bonnie Jacobson, Hershman John, George Kalamaras, Arthur Winfield Knight, Ted Kooser, Lolette Kuby, Li-Young Lee, Jim Lenfestey, Cathy Lentes, Lyn Lifshin, Diane Lockward, Laura Loomis, Jack McGuane, Michael McGriff, Irene McKinney, Sandra Marshburn, Peter Meinke, Andrew Merton, Corey Mesler, Robert Miltner, Greg Moglia, Sean Nevin, Edwina Pendarvis, Lynn Powell, David Pichaske, Chad Prevost, David Ray, Susan Rich, William Pitt Root, Michael Salinger, Vivian Shipley, Penelope Scambly Schott, Derek Sheffield, Noelle Sickels, Larry Smith, Gary Soto, Margo Solod, P. J. Taylor, Marianne Taylor, Richard Tayson, Susan Terris, Carine Topal, Jim

• Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition  (2005) by Cheryl A. Wall
  In blues music, "worrying the line" is the technique of breaking up a phrase by changing pitch, adding a shout, or repeating words in order to emphasize, clarify, or subvert a moment in a song. Cheryl A. Wall applies this term to fiction and nonfiction writing by African American women in the twentieth century, demonstrating how these writers bring about similar changes in African American and American literary traditions. Examining the works of Lucille Clifton, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, and Alice Walker, Wall highlights ways in which these authors construct family genealogies, filling in the gaps with dreams, rituals, music, or images that forge a connection to family lost through slavery. For the black woman author, Wall contends, this method of revising and extending canonical forms provides the opportunity to comment on the literary past while also calling attention to the historical effects of slaverythat remain. For the reader, Wall shows, the images and words combine to create a new kind of text that extends meanings of the line, both as lineage and as literary tradition.

• Conversations With Audre Lorde (2004) by Joan Wylie Hall

• Warrior Poet (2004) by Alexis De Veaux -- Winner Lambda Literary 2004 Biography Award
  During her lifetime, Audre Lorde (1934-1992), author of the landmark Cancer Journals, created a mythic identity for herself that retains its vitality to this day. Drawing from the private archives of the poet's estate and numerous interviews, Alexis De Veaux demystifies Lorde's iconic status, charting her conservative childhood in Harlem; her early marriage to a white, gay man with whom she had two children; her emergence as an outspoken black feminist lesbian; and her canonization as a seminal poet of American literature. 18 photographs.

• Coming Out of Cancer: Writings from the Lesbian Cancer Epidemic (2000), Victoria A. Brownworth, ed.
  One-third of women run a lifetime risk of developing cancer, and studies have shown that lesbians are especially at risk. They often don't access healthcare because of homophobia in the medical establishment and inadequate insurance coverage. With its diversity of views and experience, Coming out of Cancer includes contributions from  Audre Lorde, Ruthann Robson, Pat Parker, Rachel Carson, and Dr. Susan Love and offers information and support for survivors, loved ones, and community activists.

• We Heal From Memory: Sexton, Lorde, Anzaldua, and the Poetry of Witness (2000) by Cassie Premo Steele
  Through an examination of the poetry of Anne Sexton, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa,We Heal From Memory paints a vivid picture of how our culture carries a history of traumatic violence--child sexual abuse, the ownership and enforcement of women's sexuality under slavery, the transmission of violence through generations, and the destruction of non-white cultures and their histories through colonization. According to Cassie Premo Steele, the poetry of Sexton, Lorde, and Anzaldúa allows us to witness and to heal from such disparate traumatic events.