Audre Lorde is a poet known for her fierce boldness. Refusing to accept the status quo, she uses her writing to dispel misinformation and prejudice. The iconic trait of her writing is to present perfect honesty. Whatever she's feeling or experiencing, she puts down on the page.
Lorde began to write poetry after a lifelong fascination with the subject. When asked questions in conversation, she would respond with a poem or an excerpt from a poem. This worked fairly well until she found herself lacking the specific poetry to express what she was feeling and thinking, so she wrote her own. It's deeply personal and entirely original.
In much of her writing, Lorde addresses the parts of her identity which may be labeled unconventional. She writes about being black, lesbian, and a mother. Her most common themes include: racism, sexism, sexual-orientation discrimination, childhood, motherhood, and death. Repeatedly, her poems reflect back to when she was a child. There's a lot of pain and bittersweetness in her treatment of her early years and her family. Often she seems to want to go back to those days, but other times she recognizes her accomplishments in the present, far surpassing her childhood. Whatever the topic, whatever the setting, she still always writes from a personal history.
