Your silence will not protect you

A writer, teacher and activist, Audre Lorde grew up in 1930s Harlem. She earned a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University, received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for poetry, and was New York State Poet Laureate from 1991 until her death of cancer at the age of fifty-eight in 1992. She is the author of twelve books, including Zami and The Black Unicorn. Audre Lorde (1934-92) described herself as ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet’. Her extraordinary belief in the power of language – of speaking – to articulate selfhood, confront injustice and bring about change in the world remains as transformative today as it was then, and no less urgent. ‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You’ brings Lorde’s poetry and prose together for the first time.