Audre Lorde
“My sexuality is part and parcel of who I am, and my poetry comes from the intersection of me and my worlds. . . . Jesse Helms’s objection to my work is not about obscenity . . .or even about sex. It is about revolution and change. . . . Helms knows that my writing is aimed at his destruction, and the destruction of every single thing he stands for.”
Audre Lorde described herself as “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” She was not only a champion of queer rights, but of civil rights across a vast array of groups. Her work and ideas helped bring the concept of intersectionality to public consciousness. She was famous around Greenwich Village (Frequenting the Waldorf Cafe with James Baldwin) and also had a residency at Tougaloo College in Mississippi (where Alice Walker had a residency around the same time).
Evan Brechtel 