The following is a guest post by Megan Metcalf, a reference librarian in the Library’s Humanities & Social Sciences Division.
One weekday afternoon, I found myself sitting across the table from the self-proclaimed Black, lesbian, feminist, and warrior-poet Audre Lorde. To be clear, I wasn’t actually in the same room with Audre Lorde, who passed away November 17th, 1992. I was sitting in the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room at the Library of Congress watching raw footage from the documentary entitled A Litany for Survival: The Life and Work of Audre Lorde.
Audre Lorde, head-and-shoulders portrait, facing front [between 1970 and 1978]. http://lccn.loc.gov/97511285My first introduction to Audre Lorde was in college when I was assigned to read her essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” I rediscovered Audre Lorde, and her poetry, right here at the Library of Congress. My journey began with a simple catalog search, which quickly retrieved numerous books of poetry and non-fiction authored by Lorde, as well as the biography of her life written by Alexis De Veaux. After inhaling a few volumes of Lorde’s poetry, including Coal and The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, I decided that a better understanding of Lorde’s political life and work would be necessary to truly appreciate her poetry. I did a little research in the hopes of finding resources which would illuminate the context in which Lorde was writing her politically charged poetry and prose. Here’s a list of interesting and unique Audre Lorde resources that I found right here at the Library of Congress:
