Strong Women #8: Audre Lord

The Camel and the Scorpion is a book inspired by true events. It is the story of #StrongWomen - Caroline, Lydia, Anna - who spoke out for a good world despite the personal and professional risks to themselves in doing so.

This post is the eighth in my Strong Women Series. The series honors women and girls of courage.

Audre Lord. Credit: Mildred Thompson.

There's not much I can add about Audre Lorde than what she herself said, as depicted in Mildred Thompson's portrait of Ms. Lorde.

Black 
Lesbian 
Mother 
Warrior 
Poet. 
She Who Makes Her Meaning Known.


Ms. Lorde renamed herself twice. As a child, she dropped the 'y' from her birth name, Audrey, and went with Audre, which aligned more pleasingly with her surname Lorde. Later in life, Ms. Lorde chose another new name for herself, Gamba Adisa, which Ms. Lorde translated as "warrior: she who makes her meaning known."

"If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." The Cancer Journals.

“I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain.” Black Women Writers, per Poetry Foundation.


As a woman born to immigrants, a woman of color, a lesbian, womanist, poet, activist, a human with cancer - coming up in the 1940s and 1950s - she needed to be strong to live her fullest life.


“Your silence will not protect you.” From Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

A ten-minute video below on Ms. Lorde's personal, creative, and activist life - which may be the same thing?

“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”

Ms. Lorde died young - only 58 - in 1992.

Women of courage like Audre Lord? They are who kept me writing The Camel and the Scorpion for 20 years, so I could share the stories of women like The Camel and the Scorpion protagonists, Caroline, Lydia, and Anna.

Honorable, imperfect, brave, vulnerable champions, all of them. Risking their personal and professional lives to stand up for their ideals.