Bio: (1934-1992) American feminist theorist. Audrey Lorde completed her master's degree at Columbia University and taught at the City University of New York, and the Free University of Berlin. Lorde belonged to the current of African-American lesbian feminism. She felt that white feminists, such as Mary Daly, misrepresented African-Americans. She criticized what she called the "whiteness" of feminist theory, that is, neglecting the problem that the experience of oppression is not the same for all women. Lorde emphasized the importance of the experience of black people of racial oppression, for the identities and strategies African American people use in order to combat oppression.

Audrey Lorde's feminist approach is organized around the "theory of difference". This theory criticizes the concept of binary opposition between women and men as too simplistic. Women's identities and living conditions are influenced by many factors: class, race, gender and sexual identity, age, and health. Lorde has explored some of these factors in her books, as they have had a direct impact on her personal experience. The racial factor was very important because she was African-American, she studied sexual identity because she had a lesbian sexual orientation, and the topic of health became very important to her when she was diagnosed with cancer. She also emphasized the importance of erotic and sexual behavior as a source of power for women. The patriarchal society controlled the sexual behavior of women, which also influenced some feminists to have a very negative attitude toward the concept of eroticism. While some feminists perceived erotic as a symbol of male domination over women, Lorde saw erotic as a possibility of liberation for women from patriarchal domination. She believed that the erotic, in addition to the sexual component, also contains aspects of enjoyment and love, which give freedom and power to women. Lorde is very important as one of the founders of Lesbian and African-American feminism, as well as for emphasizing the importance of studying the multiple identities of women in feminist theory.

Main works

Coal (1976); 

The Cancer Journals (1980);

Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power (1981); 

Zami (1982);

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (1984).