Survival Is a Promise

Audrey Lorde was a survivor: of childhood disability injustice, of her best friend's suicide, of the atomic age. She was a college activist against nuclear arms. A mother who knew that poetry could help her children survive a racist world. And, ultimately, a cancer survivor, who understood that the war going on within her cells was connected to the struggle against oppression taking place all around her. This stunning new account of Lorde's life and work illuminates how, for Lorde, survival was not simply about getting through, or about resilience. It was about how to live on, and with, a planet in transformation. Lorde's committment to justice was intimately connected to her deep engagement with the natural world, with the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For Lorde, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be on earth, and how to live fully as a Black feminist lesbian warrior poet.