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19 pages 38 minutes read

Audre Lorde

A Litany for Survival

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1978

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Background

Literary Context: Community and Writing Style

In the 1960s and 1970s, Audre Lorde was a notable figure in LGBTQ+ and Black Marxist communities. According to The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, Lorde was “among the most significant poets articulating the intersections of feminism and race, in both her poetry and nonfictional writing” (Greene, Roland, et al. The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 482). Lorde was dedicated to creating space for Black women in the feminist movement, which was predominately white. She was part of the Combahee River Collective and her literary community included Black women, such as Michele Wallace, and other radical leftist lesbians, such as Adrienne Rich. The Combahee River Collective created a National Black Feminist Organization in response to the whiteness of the upper-class feminist movement.

Lorde and her contemporaries believed that personal is political and wrote from personal experience, rejecting the Modernist poetic ideal of the universal experience. Furthermore, Lorde tended to write concisely in free-verse. She argued that poetry’s brevity makes it accessible to marginalized people. The Princeton Encyclopedia includes her famous quote: “of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is…the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper” (Greene 294). Lorde argues that poetry is not a luxury. It is a vehicle for marginalized people to share their personal experiences and establish camaraderie.

Biographical Context: Impact of Health Issues on Lorde’s Writing

Lorde’s battle with cancer also informed “A Litany for Survival,” as she explains in an interview with Adrienne Rich:

That paper [‘The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action’] and ‘Litany for Survival’ came about the same time. I had the feeling, probably a body sense, that life was never going to be the same. If not now, eventually, this was something I would have to face, if not cancer, then somehow, I would have to examine the terms and means as well as the whys of my survival—and in the face of alteration (“An Interview with Audre Lorde.” Signs, vol. 6, no. 4, 1981, pp. 713-36).

Lorde wrote extensively about her medical issues in The Cancer Journals. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977, a year before the publication of her book The Black Unicorn, which included “A Litany for Survival.” She had to have a mastectomy—her “body sense” and her literal body were radically changed due to her illness. Lorde refused to get a prosthesis, in part because the prosthetic that she was initially offered was pink, which stood out against her Black skin. Navigating the medical industrial complex as a Black lesbian was a difficult journey that informed her poetry. Six years later, she was diagnosed with liver cancer, which took her life at the age of 58.

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