Landmark: Audre Lorde

Poet Jackie Kay & performer Selina Thompson plus Jonathan Rollins and Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins the children of Audre Lorde discuss the influence of the US writer & civil rights activist whose work considers feminism, lesbianism, civil rights and black female identity. Shahidha Bari presents.

In her famous essay The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House (1980), Lorde wrote:

"Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

Lorde's writing includes poetry collections such as The First Cities (1968), Cables to Rage (1970) and The Black Unicorn (1978). Her Essays include Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984) and Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference. She also wrote Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) her novel chronicling her own childhood and sexuality.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches and The Black Unicorn are being reprinted in the UK this July.

Presenter: Shahidha Bari

Producer: Debbie Kilbride