The Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project

Audre Lorde was a much-celebrated and hugely influential Black lesbian writer and poet, as well as an activist, autobiographer and professor. She died in 1992 at the age of 58.

Lorde self-described as “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” Through her poetry and life’s work, Lorde fought against many forms of injustice, including racism, homophobia, sexism and classism.

Born to Grenadan parents, Lorde grew up in New York City, where she received her bachelor’s degree in 1959 and master’s degree in library science in 1961. Her first volume of poetry was published in 1968.

Some of Lorde’s most notable poetry collections include Cables to Rage (1970) and The Black Unicorn (1978). She also wrote of her experience with breast cancer and the medical establishment in The Cancer Journals (1980). For her book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982), she coined the term “biomythography” to describe a new genre combining biography, history and mythology. In 1989, she received a National Book Award for her essay collection A Burst of Light, and she served as the New York State Poet Laureate from 1991 to 1992.

She was one of the inaugural inductees into the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor within the Stonewall National Monument at New York City’s Stonewall Inn. Today, the Callen-Lorde Center, a world-renowned LGBTQ healthcare center based in New York City, is named for her and the AIDS activist and musician Michael Callen.

Lorde’s Westchester connection

Lorde worked as the young adult librarian at the Mount Vernon Public Library from 1961 to 1963. She was offered the position on August 2, 1960, for a salary of $4,950 (equivalent to approximately $51,000 in 2024).

“It was innovative and stimulating at first, but once I had done it, it wasn’t creative any more and I had to find something else,” Lorde said of her time working in the field of librarianship, as quoted in the book Conversations with Audre Lorde. “All the time of course I was writing.”

The most comprehensive synthesis of Lorde’s time living and working in Mount Vernon can be found in Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde by Alexis De Veaux, a Black queer feminist independent scholar. De Veaux writes that Lorde lived at 5 Monroe Street in Mount Vernon, in a “bright, sunny two-bedroom apartment” in a “comfortable integrated neighborhood” six blocks from the library.

De Veaux describes Lorde’s librarianship through this anecdote:

“…[T]he library had few books by or about black people available to the young black teenagers who hung out in its reading rooms and were watched with great suspicion by the head librarian, Mrs. Larch, who thought they were not serious readers. But Lorde liked them, thought it important they were in the library taking out books and subversively provided them with stories about black adventurers she hid in her desk.”

While De Veaux describes Lorde’s time employed in Mount Vernon as mostly positive, characterized by personal autonomy and increased status in her home life, she also recounts two particularly uncomfortable incidents that occurred at work.

In one instance, Lorde was reprimanded for refusing to participate in a “civil defense” air raid drill, a decision driven by her political stance on nuclear policy and one that she felt strengthened her sense of self-determination. At another point, Lorde was targeted by fellow Black employees working as library clerks in the Westchester Library System for wearing her hair in an afro, communicated through their gesture of leaving a straightening comb and iron in her locker.

Newspaper articles reveal that, during her tenure at the library, Lorde held film screenings for teenagers and led storytimes for preschoolers. An illustrative example of her programming was a film series titled “Teen Age Problems,” which featured films about social issues. After Lorde’s death, her former colleagues Connie Mauro and Shirley Garrett commemorated her in an obituary, recalling her writing poetry in the library, connection with young African American patrons, and enthusiasm for her work.

If you have more information about Audre Lorde’s time in Mount Vernon, please contact the Westchester LGBTQ+ History Project at westchesterlgbtqhistoryproject@proton.me.

Sources

“Lorde, Audre (1934–1992) .” Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. . Encyclopedia.com. (February 21, 2024). https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/lorde-audre-1934-1992 

“National LGBTQ Wall of Honor Unveiled at Historic Stonewall Inn.” National LGBTQ Task Force, June 20, 2019. https://www.thetaskforce.org/news/nationallgbtqwallofhonortobeunveiled/

Mount Vernon Public Library offer letter, August 2, 1960; Audre Lorde Papers; box 10; folder 111A; Spelman College Archives.

Lorde, Audre and Joan Wylie Hall. Conversations with Audre Lorde. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2004: 11.

de Veaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004: 68-74.

Allen, Maury. “Poet’s voice survives in memories, poems.” Mount Vernon Argus (White Plains, NY), November 28, 1998, 5. https://www.newspapers.com/image/896978032