Reading + Discussion: Audre Lorde

Make time for thinking deeply about a single idea from a variety of perspectives.

The Frederick Douglass in Newburgh Project together with Newburgh LGBTQ Center, will start a reading series in January 2020. Lasting six sessions, facilitator(s) and participants will explore the work of Audre Lorde using Lorde’s poems, essays, and excerpts.

Lorde’s powerful voice, documented in her poems, essays, speeches, biomythography and Cancer Journals, remain vital and instructive. It is not only worth reading for its own sake, but continues to provide keen insight into the differences that strengthen American society. This R&D series provides participants throughout New York state an opportunity to discuss Lorde’s writings as they explore issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.

This project is based on a previous reading and discussion group that focused on civic engagement and held its session at various Barbershop Conversations in Newburgh in 2018 https://www.facebook.com/events/239952913253090/

BOOKS

Warrior Poet

Audre Lorde

Alexis de Veaux’s biography of Lorde is impressively researched and can provide readers a fuller picture in which to contextualize her writings.

The Collected Poems of Audrey Lorde

Audre Lorde

This is the definitive collection of Lorde’s poetry, with poems from her early and late careers, featuring work both well-known and waiting to be discovered by new readers.

Sister Outsiders

Audre Lorde

This collection of essays by Lorde constitute her most explicit challenge to the oppression she experienced and observed in the lives of others, including racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Audre Lorde

Lorde’s “biomythography” not only tells the story of her own life, but that of the other women who played an important role in it, and the symbols that structure all of our lives.

The Cancer Journals

Audre Lorde

In this collection of essays, Lorde describes her experiences with breast cancer, and how medical treatment and recovery relate to issues of gender and race.