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Audre Lorde, one of the leading lesbian feminist activists and authors of the last quarter century, is being honored by Spelman College, which is preparing a collection of Lorde’s personal papers for public use. (Photo by Salimah Ali)
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HOME > COMMUNITY > COMMUNITY FEATURE
By: RYAN LEE
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ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL black lesbian and feminist voices of the late 20th century will soon be amplified again, as Spelman College prepares to make public the personal writings of Audre Lorde, who once described herself as a “black lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.”
As a result of her friendship with then-Spelman College President Johnnetta Cole, Lorde visited the private, historically black female arts college in Atlanta during the 1980s. She bequeathed her personal papers to the school’s archives when she died of breast cancer in November 1992.
“We got the Audre Lorde papers when Dr. Cole was president, and have been in need of archival support for the project since then,” says Beverly Guy-Sheftall, founding director of the Women’s Research & Resource Center at Spelman College.
The Women’s Center finally secured that support via a $140,000 grant from the Arcus Foundation, a Michigan-based philanthropic group that funds organizations that “illuminate the presence and contributions of people in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, and the issues which confront them.”
“We are very proud to partner with a major institution, the flagship institution in terms of black women’s education,” says Urvashi Vaid, executive director of the Arcus Foundation.
“I think it’s a very positive sign, and it’s a sign of good leadership by the university’s president, faculty and administration,” Vaid says. “I think they want to create a very inclusive place, and they’re trying to become more engaged and forthright in talking about issues of homophobia.”
The Women’s Center at Spelman began to explore issues related to sexual orientation about 10 years ago, and is “the only historically black college doing it consistently,” Guy-Sheftall says.
The center is celebrating its 25th anniversary and decided to focus much of its energy this year on establishing a “public identity” as a combatant of homophobia, Guy-Sheftall says.
“We see this as connected with the work we’ve been doing [promoting feminism],” she says. “Audre Lorde is probably the person that we would think about as having commitments to the issues [the Women’s Center advocates].”
Spelman archivists are currently sifting through and cataloguing Lorde’s papers, which are expected to be available to the public in 2007. The papers are the centerpiece of the yearlong Black Lesbian/Feminist Project at Spelman, which also includes a series of forums on homophobia and heterosexism at the Atlanta University Center hosted by Afrekete and the Toni Cade Bambara Collective, gay student groupd at the AUC.
The final element of the Black Lesbian/Feminist Project was integrated into the larger anniversary celebration for the Women’s Center, with noted scholars participating in a symposium entitled “Remembering Audre Lorde: In Celebration of Black Women Writers, Scholars, Artists and Activists.”
The three-day symposium featured lesbian feminist author bell hooks, playwright and poet Pearl Cleage, and National Black Women’s Health Project founder Byllye Avery talking about Lorde’s legacy, “the future of black feminism, and LGBT issues in the African Diaspora.”
Lorde’s surviving partner, Gloria Joseph, also attended the Spelman events celebrating Lorde’s life.
“It was really so wonderful to see all of this,” Vaid says. “Audre Lorde was a really thoughtful and radical writer, and poet, and political activist, and this is a wonderful opportunity to lift up the work of a black lesbian feminist.
“That’s something we certainly need today,” she adds. “Her voice, and the voice of [feminist poet] June Jordan are really missed — they were engaged intellectuals.”
LORDE’S ACTIVISM AND POETRY knew few bounds, as she often wrote about the intersections of race, sex, sexual orientation and economics. She published her first book of poetry, “The First Cities,” in 1969, and in the early 1980s released modern classics like “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” and “Sister Outsider,” which continue to guide Spelman students today, Guy-Sheftall says.
“We teach Audre Lorde in our women’s studies courses on campus,” says Guy-Sheftall, who adds that there is “tremendous excitement” among Spelman faculty and students about the Lorde papers.
Even poignant and profound poets are often relegated to obscurity, which is why Vaid says she is excited to see Spelman shining a spotlight on Lorde’s words.
“She covered a lot of ground [and] she was also very engaged in the GLBT movement in the late ‘70s and ‘80s,” Vaid says. “Hopefully this archive that Spelman is going to do will bring her work to a wider audience.”
Lorde donated her personal papers to Spelman upon ...
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