A01=Audre Lorde
Author_Audre Lorde
black culture
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
Category=JBSF1
classic poetry
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
eq_society-politics
family dynamics
feminism
feminist
fierce elegy
gender theory
intersectionality
lgbt
lgbtq
liberation
modern classics
music
poems
political thought
race in america
self help
social justice
true story
Product details
- ISBN 9780241782965
- Weight: 88g
- Dimensions: 128 x 197mm
- Publication Date: 16 Apr 2026
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
‘I am Black because I come from the earth’s inside
now take my word for jewel in the open light.’
Impassioned and profound, the poems in Coal showcase Audre Lorde in all her dazzling elegance and multiplicity. Mournful, celebratory, politically conscious, this early collection faithfully captures the complex interiority of the self. With insight and great feeling, these poems explore racial and sexual politics, liberation and love; they are strongly autobiographical (including poems about Lorde’s children, her sister and her parents, as well as an elegy for a dear childhood friend). These timeless poems resonate down the years.
Audre Lorde was a writer, feminist and civil rights activist - or, as she famously put it, 'Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet'. Born in New York in 1934, she had her first poem published while she was still in high school. After stints as a factory worker, ghost writer, social worker, X-ray technician, medical clerk, and arts and crafts supervisor, she became a librarian in Manhattan and gradually rose to prominence as a poet, essayist and speaker, anthologised by Langston Hughes, lauded by Adrienne Rich, and befriended by James Baldwin. She was made Poet Laureate of New York State in 1991, when she was awarded the Walt Whitman prize; she was also awarded honorary doctorates from Hunter, Oberlin and Haverford colleges. She died of cancer in 1992, aged 58.
