A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde

'It is the work of the poet within us to bridge contradictions.' Audre Lorde - black, lesbian, feminist warrior - knew plenty about that. Though determined to survive as who she was, it wasn't an easy option: she suffered a backstreet abortion, married a white man and had two children along the way. Griffin and Parkerson interviewed the poet extensively in the eight years before her death by cancer in 1992: Lorde tells her story eloquently, too involved in the evolutionary struggle to waste time on regrets and bitterness, too involved in life to fear death. At the forefront of liberation movements in America, Lorde did not shrink from the political at home. In a revealing interview her son talks about having to define his own version of what manhood meant - one that wouldn't repulse his mother. An inspirational figure who believed her poetry was a means rather than an end - 'The power you feel is a power you own' - Lorde is well remembered here.