Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from house
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm tre C V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry, and
Speaker 1: we're going to continue the second part of our two
Speaker 1: part episode about Audrey Lord today and community building and
Speaker 1: solidarity were major themes of Audrey Lord's poetry and her life,
Speaker 1: and because of the role that she played in the
Speaker 1: feminist movement in the community of women that she worked within,
Speaker 1: we'd really be remiss if we didn't at least mention
Speaker 1: a few of her lifelong friends. These included Audrey and
Speaker 1: rich In, her lifelong partner, Michelle Cliff, both poets and
Speaker 1: professor Blanche Cook, and playwright Clear Costs. For most of
Speaker 1: Audrey's life, her partner and co parent was a woman
Speaker 1: named Francis Clayton, and she spent her last year's with
Speaker 1: a woman named Aria Joseph. And Audrey was also a
Speaker 1: teacher and a speaker. She worked at a number of
Speaker 1: colleges and universities during her career, and she became an
Speaker 1: influential presence in the feminist movement. She edited literary journals,
Speaker 1: helping to give a voice to emerging black poets, and
Speaker 1: when white publishers didn't want to publish the work of
Speaker 1: people of color, especially women, and doubly especially lesbians of color,
Speaker 1: she and other women started their own presses. She was
Speaker 1: also a policy panelist for the National Endowment of the
Speaker 1: Arts Literature Program. Also an activist, Audrey helped found a
Speaker 1: number of social organizations, including the anti apartheid organization Sisters
Speaker 1: and Supportive Sisters in South Africa, and the Women's Coalition
Speaker 1: of St. Croix. With Barbara Smith, she co founded Kitchen
Speaker 1: Table Women of Color Press, which was the first publisher
Speaker 1: run by women of color in the United States. Not
Speaker 1: long before her death, she was also the first black
Speaker 1: person to be named the New York State Poet. So
Speaker 1: in this episode, we'll talk about her personal, political, and
Speaker 1: poet lives, including her world as a wife and a mother.
Speaker 1: When she was twenty seven, Audrey met the man that
Speaker 1: she would later marry, Edward Ashley Rollins. He had graduated
Speaker 1: from law school at Columbia earlier than that. At the
Speaker 1: age of seventeen, he had run away from home to
Speaker 1: join the Navy, although he had to have his father's
Speaker 1: commission to do so because of his age and coincidentally,
Speaker 1: both Ed and Audrey were having an affair with the
Speaker 1: same woman before they met uh one of several women
Speaker 1: that Audrey was involved with at the time. Ed wanted
Speaker 1: to have children, and long before they were in a
Speaker 1: physical relationship with each other, Audrey had also thought about
Speaker 1: having children with Ed, and they both had their own
Speaker 1: pretty serious internal struggles about their relationship, and they had
Speaker 1: to do a lot of soul searching before committing to it.
Speaker 1: Audrey was black and identified as lesbian. Uh Ed was white,
Speaker 1: and while he didn't really identify as gay, he had
Speaker 1: mostly been involved with men for a number of years.
Speaker 1: Their whole existence as a couple had all kinds of
Speaker 1: social and political implications for them and basically any anyone
Speaker 1: they would ever encounter. Uh Ed's mother and many of
Speaker 1: Audrey's friends were also opposed to the idea, and they
Speaker 1: loved each other, but they weren't really in love. To
Speaker 1: quote Audrey as a black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage,
Speaker 1: there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend
Speaker 1: everybody's comfortable prejudices of who I should be. They got
Speaker 1: married on March thirty one, nineteen sixty two, with the
Speaker 1: idea that they would work together to have children and
Speaker 1: raise a family according to their own rules and principles,
Speaker 1: and this was not an overwhelmingly popular decision among either
Speaker 1: of their personal lives. No one from Ed's family attended
Speaker 1: the wedding, and several of Audrey's lesbian friends made the
Speaker 1: same decision. The pair had two children, Elizabeth and Jonathan.
Speaker 1: Audrey's ideas about birth and child raising were also quite
Speaker 1: progressive for the time. She wanted ed to go to
Speaker 1: childbirth classes with her and to be in the room
Speaker 1: when she gave birth, and she of the baby to
Speaker 1: stay with her rather than be in a hospital nursery.
Speaker 1: She also wanted to breastfeed, which did not have nearly
Speaker 1: the level of social insistence or acceptance that it does today.
Speaker 1: As they got older, she made homemade whole grain bread
Speaker 1: for the children and limited how much sugar they could have,
Speaker 1: and she talked openly with both of them about social
Speaker 1: issues ideas that are pretty commonplace today but in the
Speaker 1: early sixties were not so much. Yeah, I see a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that at the time we're really
Speaker 1: progressive are today pretty much a given. When it comes
Speaker 1: to a lot of the things that she thought about
Speaker 1: giving birth and raising children. In nineteen sixty three, Audrey
Speaker 1: and Ed attended the March on Washington for Jobs at Freedom,
Speaker 1: at which Martin Luther King Jr. Delivered his I Have
Speaker 1: a Dream speech, although they had left by the time
Speaker 1: he started, and they listened to it in the car
Speaker 1: on the way home. Um Andre wrote, though, that she
Speaker 1: found the march an immensely moving experience. At Christmas time
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty three, their apartment burned in a fire
Speaker 1: after Ed left a cigarette unattended. Then, in June of
Speaker 1: nine five, Audrey was rear ended at a red light
Speaker 1: while baby Jonathan was in the car with her. His
Speaker 1: injuries were minor, but because of her injuries, Audrey was
Speaker 1: unable to pick up her children or write for months.
Speaker 1: So their relationship, apart from all of the social issues
Speaker 1: that were inherent in it, which put their own pressures
Speaker 1: onto the two of them, it gradually became strained. Both
Speaker 1: of them were having relationships with people, which on its
Speaker 1: own was fine with both of them and was sort
Speaker 1: of part of the deal. But Audrey was open about
Speaker 1: her relationships with women and disclosed them to Ed, and
Speaker 1: often they were with people that she was friends with.
Speaker 1: Ed on the other hand, tended to carry out his
Speaker 1: affairs in secret, which Audrey found upsetting. Uh In their
Speaker 1: disagreements with each other, Audrey could sometimes become violent. Another
Speaker 1: source of stress likely had to do with Ed's privilege
Speaker 1: as a white man. Audrey was perpetually aware of their
Speaker 1: presence as an interracial couple during the Civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: She knew that their relationship was a risky one to
Speaker 1: be in and that they faced criticism and judgment from
Speaker 1: both black and white communities. Ed, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: didn't really even consider his sexual orientation and his marriage
Speaker 1: as a potential obstacle to his work in law. When
Speaker 1: Ed's career as a lawyer didn't really take off, they
Speaker 1: ran into financial trouble. Audrey had stopped working while she
Speaker 1: was pregnant with their first child, and so she got
Speaker 1: a night shift job and started trying to help with
Speaker 1: her father's old real estate business as well. Her mother
Speaker 1: had inherited it. After his death, Audrey started using in
Speaker 1: betamines again an effort to keep up with all of
Speaker 1: these responsibilities and also her children. She didn't write much
Speaker 1: during her children's youngest years, but then a man taking
Speaker 1: a class on black writers asked to interview her for
Speaker 1: a paper, and she agreed, and the paper Portraitor as
Speaker 1: someone who had given up on writing to become a
Speaker 1: wife and mother, and after reading it, she really rededicated
Speaker 1: herself to writing. She set up a desk in her
Speaker 1: bedroom and insisted that ed would take over the household
Speaker 1: for three hours a day so that she would have
Speaker 1: time to just focus on her writing. At first, as
Speaker 1: she was trying to get back into the world of poetry,
Speaker 1: she didn't have a lot of success getting published. But
Speaker 1: then the black arts movement evolved from the Civil rights
Speaker 1: and Black power movements. A number of new black publications
Speaker 1: started to take shape, and in nineteen sixty seven, independent
Speaker 1: publisher Poets Press contacted Audrey with interest in publishing a
Speaker 1: book of her work. Her first published poetry collection was
Speaker 1: called The First Cities, and it came out in April
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty eight. The following January, Audrey received a
Speaker 1: call from Galen Williams, who would go on to launch
Speaker 1: the literary organization Poets and Writers, and in this call,
Speaker 1: Galen was telling her that she had been recommended to
Speaker 1: receive a National Endowment for the Arts grant to be
Speaker 1: a poet in residence at a historically black college called
Speaker 1: two Galuu College in Mississippi. She was really reluctant to
Speaker 1: go at first. She you know, she was a mother
Speaker 1: and her children needed her. She had also been sick
Speaker 1: for several months following a particularly bad case of the flu.
Speaker 1: The South itself itself was still reeling from the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights movement and desegregation. The Deep South at that point
Speaker 1: was an enormously dangerous place for black people as a whole.
Speaker 1: To Blue itself was also the scene of pretty violent
Speaker 1: racial hostility. There were always there were frequent reports of
Speaker 1: shots being fired by white people along the edge of
Speaker 1: town into the black areas of town. But she decided
Speaker 1: to go, and later she said that the experience of
Speaker 1: teaching there changed her life. So for six weeks at
Speaker 1: Too Glue, Audrey taught a poetry workshop, and it was
Speaker 1: her first work as a teacher. In her workshops, they
Speaker 1: talked a lot about identity and the nuances of race
Speaker 1: and making a personal connection to writing and learning. It
Speaker 1: really became a collaborative environment in which Audrey learned more
Speaker 1: about her own work. While teaching and writing, They all,
Speaker 1: including Audrey, wrote a huge amount of work and Audrey
Speaker 1: worked with Galen Williams during this time to publish a
Speaker 1: literary magazine for the students. Audrey's work at TULU was
Speaker 1: part of what convinced her to use poetry and language
Speaker 1: as a force for social change in the world. Following
Speaker 1: teaching there, she wanted to use her own writing to
Speaker 1: open people's hearts and minds and to raise awareness of racism, sexism, homophobia,
Speaker 1: and other forms of discrimination, and she wanted to teach
Speaker 1: other people to read and think and write as well.
Speaker 1: She went on to have teaching jobs at City College
Speaker 1: in New York, Herbert H. Lamon College, John Jay College
Speaker 1: of Criminal Justice, and Hunter College, as well as lots
Speaker 1: of other visiting teaching roles. She taught writing workshops as
Speaker 1: well as classes and workshops on racism and identity all
Speaker 1: over the place. And while she was at two Galue,
Speaker 1: Audrey also meant Francis Clayton, and although Audrey had had
Speaker 1: many other relationships while married to Ed, the depth of
Speaker 1: her relationship with Frances was quite different. She couldn't do both.
Speaker 1: She couldn't maintain her marriage and this relationship. She loved Ed,
Speaker 1: but she was really increasingly in love with Frances and
Speaker 1: When she returned home to New York, her relationship with
Speaker 1: Ed became even more strained than it had already been.
Speaker 1: But they had two children together and her children's well
Speaker 1: being was a huge priority, so Audrey wanted to go
Speaker 1: to couples therapy, but for a long time Ed was
Speaker 1: resistant to the idea. In the spring of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: Audrey and Ed had a trial separation, and that fall
Speaker 1: she asked him to move out. They finalized their separation
Speaker 1: their separation agreement in nineteen seventy one, and started divorce
Speaker 1: proceedings in nineteen seventy two. Their divorce became final in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and it was not really amicable by
Speaker 1: this point. Although Audrey and Ed weren't living together anymore,
Speaker 1: her relationship with Frances was for a while long distance.
Speaker 1: Audrey was in New York and for this was in
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, where she worked at Brown University, and the
Speaker 1: distance really became increasingly painful for both of them, so
Speaker 1: they finally moved in together, with Francis moving to New
Speaker 1: York uh since Audrey had to stay there due to
Speaker 1: the divorce in nineteen seventy two. While she hadn't really
Speaker 1: been hiding her relationship with women. In nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 1: Audrey publicly came out during a poetry reading. Francis became
Speaker 1: Audrey's partner and co mother to her children, and this
Speaker 1: relationship lasted for most of the rest of Audrey's life,
Speaker 1: although Audrey continued to be involved with other women, though
Speaker 1: more discreetly than in her life with Ed, where she
Speaker 1: was very forthright about it. The two women bought a
Speaker 1: house together in one of New York, New York's more
Speaker 1: conservative neighborhoods, and they were really frequent targets of racism
Speaker 1: and homophobia there. The kids also had a hard time.
Speaker 1: They were leaving this privileged world of private school to
Speaker 1: attend a public school, and they didn't really fit in
Speaker 1: with either the white children or the black children in
Speaker 1: their new environment. It and as a mother, Audrey tried
Speaker 1: to instill in both of the kids a sense of
Speaker 1: social justice and a firm understanding of her values. She
Speaker 1: wanted Jonathan in particular to grow up as an advocate
Speaker 1: for equal rights, but sometimes this was a struggle. As
Speaker 1: we know, kids don't always do with their parents in
Speaker 1: vision for them. Uh and Audrey really worried about the
Speaker 1: lack of a male role model in Jonathan's life in
Speaker 1: their home. It also wasn't always easy for her to
Speaker 1: put forth her own beliefs in a way that made
Speaker 1: sense to the kids. She believed in non violence, for example,
Speaker 1: but she was really outraged when she learned that the
Speaker 1: children were being bullied at their new school and and
Speaker 1: not fighting back, and her view, while non violence was preferable,
Speaker 1: defending oneself was also a necessity. In nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 1: Audrey's collection of poetry from a Land Where Other People
Speaker 1: Live was nominated for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Speaker 1: The other nominees included, among others, Audrey and Rich and
Speaker 1: Alice Walker add Ran, Alice and Audrey all knew one another.
Speaker 1: It's an illiterative crew to all be nominated together. It
Speaker 1: is uh and they knew one another's work, and they
Speaker 1: were all feminists. Before the winner was announced, they got
Speaker 1: together and wrote a statement that would be read on
Speaker 1: behalf of all of them should one of them win.
Speaker 1: Audrey and richest collection, Diving into the Wreck Poems nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one and nineteen seventy two, co won along with
Speaker 1: Alan Ginsburg's The Fall of America poems of these states
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy one. Here's part of the statement that
Speaker 1: Audrey and Rich read when accepting the award. The statement
Speaker 1: I'm going to read was prepared by three of the
Speaker 1: women nominated for the National Book Award for Poetry, with
Speaker 1: the agreement that it would be read by whichever of
Speaker 1: us if any was chosen. We Audrey Lord, Audrey and Rich,
Speaker 1: and Alice Walker together accept this award in the name
Speaker 1: of all the women whose voices have gone and still
Speaker 1: go unheard in a patriarchal world, and in the name
Speaker 1: of those who, like us, have been tolerated as token
Speaker 1: women in this culture, often at great cost and in
Speaker 1: great pain. We believe that we can enrich ourselves more
Speaker 1: in supporting and giving to each other than by competing
Speaker 1: against each other, and that poetry, if it is poetry,
Speaker 1: exists in a realm beyond ranking and comparison. We symbolically
Speaker 1: joined together here in refusing the terms of patriarchal competition
Speaker 1: and declaring that we will share this prize among us,
Speaker 1: to be used as best we can for women. I
Speaker 1: think that is a great sentiment, and we're gonna let
Speaker 1: that sit for a second as we pause. So are
Speaker 1: you ready to dive back into the world of Audrey Lord, Yes,
Speaker 1: We're gonna start with lots of travel, alrighty. Starting in
Speaker 1: the late nineteen seventies, Audrey started to travel, and she
Speaker 1: would continue to travel pretty extensively for the rest of
Speaker 1: her life. First, she went to Barbados, where her father
Speaker 1: had been born, and one of the things she wanted
Speaker 1: to do while there was to find evidence of his birth.
Speaker 1: She was not really successful in that effort, but that
Speaker 1: was one of her goals. The year that she turned forty,
Speaker 1: she and her family traveled to the West coast of Africa.
Speaker 1: Audrey was following an intuition that her ancestors had been
Speaker 1: from there, so this trip and the trip to Barbadoes
Speaker 1: were both in a way about her seeking out her
Speaker 1: identity and her roots. Her time in Africa deeply influenced
Speaker 1: her writing and her identity. After she returned, she increasingly
Speaker 1: drew from African spirituality and dress, and African imagy made
Speaker 1: its way into her writing. She continued to travel around
Speaker 1: the United States and to other countries, including the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union in Nigeria, to read, speak and attend conferences along
Speaker 1: with themes of love equality and social progress that were
Speaker 1: already prevalent in her work. She began to write about
Speaker 1: the power of the erotic after seeing how differently eroticism
Speaker 1: and physical relationships were approached in Africa than in the West,
Speaker 1: and in nine, as her work was becoming better known,
Speaker 1: she also began working with literary agents Charlotte Sheedy, whose
Speaker 1: agency actually still represents lord work today. W. W. Norton
Speaker 1: published her collection Cole in nineteen seventy six, and being
Speaker 1: published by a major publisher marked a huge turn in
Speaker 1: her prominence as a poet. In nineteen seventy seven, at
Speaker 1: the age of forty three, Audrey went to the doctor
Speaker 1: after finding a lump in her breast. She had a
Speaker 1: biopsy which showed that the tumor was benign. She started
Speaker 1: writing and speaking about this experience almost immediately. She delivered
Speaker 1: a speech about it on a panel at a Modern
Speaker 1: Language Association meeting less than a month after she had
Speaker 1: been given the results. Less than a year after that,
Speaker 1: on Labor date nine, she found another lump and she
Speaker 1: went for another biopsy. This time the lump was malignant
Speaker 1: and unlike the previous lump, which had really taken her
Speaker 1: by surprise. She had really been living with the idea
Speaker 1: of cancer for almost a year. This time, she had
Speaker 1: already researched her options for treatment and had a list
Speaker 1: of questions prepared for her doctor when she went in.
Speaker 1: Her decision was to have a mastective and that took
Speaker 1: place on September. And after the mastectomy she really changed
Speaker 1: her diet and lifestyle dramatically uh and began taking supplements.
Speaker 1: She also began writing about her experience with cancer, as
Speaker 1: well as the sexist treatment she witnessed in the world
Speaker 1: of medicine and cancer treatment, and the pressures that were
Speaker 1: placed on women to conform after having a mastectomy. Her
Speaker 1: journals from this period were published as essays and then
Speaker 1: as a book called The Cancer Journals, and that came
Speaker 1: out in The Cancer Journals was a really groundbreaking work
Speaker 1: for a whole lot of reasons. One is that it
Speaker 1: approached breast cancer from a black lesbian perspective, which was
Speaker 1: pretty much absent in the discussion about breast cancer at
Speaker 1: the time. It also discussed cancer, mastectomy and reconstructive surgery
Speaker 1: surgery within the medical establishment, and a really frank and
Speaker 1: probing way. She did not pull any punches in the
Speaker 1: way she wrote about how doctors spoke to her, how
Speaker 1: nurses spoke to her, how people would sort of show
Speaker 1: up in her room with the presumption that it was
Speaker 1: time for her to have a prosthesis now, like there wasn't. Really.
Speaker 1: She was like that that that's not made about lots
Speaker 1: and lots uh. And there were also times when she
Speaker 1: would like she would get copies of her own medical
Speaker 1: records and she would see just deeply judgmental and cruel
Speaker 1: things that doctors had written about her in her medical records.
Speaker 1: She's not sugarcoat any of that. And her decision not
Speaker 1: to have reconstructive reconstructive surgery and also not to wear
Speaker 1: a breast proscesis is one that a lot of people
Speaker 1: would still consider subversive today, sort of an automatic assumption
Speaker 1: that if a woman has a mastectomy, she is then
Speaker 1: going to attempt to appear that she still has two breasts,
Speaker 1: And Audrey Lord was like, no, I am not doing that.
Speaker 1: You cannot make me. She instead adopted that as part
Speaker 1: of her whole identity. She would sort of dressed in
Speaker 1: an asymmetric way to uh incorporate the idea that like
Speaker 1: her body was different now, um, which is not. It
Speaker 1: was not not common at all. Even now when those
Speaker 1: sorts of issues are discussed more openly in people do
Speaker 1: make that choice a little bit more than they may
Speaker 1: be used to. It's still viewed with sort of a
Speaker 1: at best, like a quizzical reaction from people, why would
Speaker 1: you choose that? But why would you not want to have?
Speaker 1: But that this is what I'm doing. Yes. So in
Speaker 1: the seventies that was hugely outlier thinking. And despite going
Speaker 1: through all this, later in eight she was one of
Speaker 1: the speakers at the first National March on Washington for
Speaker 1: Lesbian and gay rights. In one she had another cancer
Speaker 1: scare when the doctor found blood in her stool, but
Speaker 1: that turned out to be a false alarm. In three
Speaker 1: the United States invaded Granada, which could definitely be its
Speaker 1: own podcast, in Operation Urgent Fury. The prime minister had
Speaker 1: been deposed and later murdered, and a communist leader took
Speaker 1: the home. The invasion was in part a piece of
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration's attempt to rid the world of communism. Audrey,
Speaker 1: who at this point had really started to consider the
Speaker 1: Caribbean her home, wrote a scathing essay about this called
Speaker 1: Granada Revisited, an interim report which appeared as part of
Speaker 1: her collection of essays Sister Outsider. Her position was that
Speaker 1: American foreign policy was rooted in racism and that the
Speaker 1: invasion of Grenada was a racist act meant to subjugate
Speaker 1: and dominate people of color. With his essay, she also
Speaker 1: clarified her own identity as Grenadian American. She took another
Speaker 1: trip to Grenada after the invasion to make sure that
Speaker 1: the nation had survived the American invasion. In February, she
Speaker 1: started having pain and trouble with digestion. During a cat
Speaker 1: scan to evaluate her gallbladder, doctor Shaun a tumor on
Speaker 1: her liver almostly metastasized from her best breast cancer. She
Speaker 1: knew that a malignant tumor was going to mean radiation
Speaker 1: and chemotherapy, which she did not like the idea of doing,
Speaker 1: and at the time that would still have pretty low
Speaker 1: odds of survival, so she decided not to have a biopsy.
Speaker 1: She traveled. She went to Mexico and St. Croix, and
Speaker 1: she wrote about how important it was to her to
Speaker 1: be somewhere warm and bright. In April, she traveled to Germany,
Speaker 1: and that was a trip that had been in the
Speaker 1: work since nine when filmmaker, writer and activist Dagmar Schultz
Speaker 1: had asked her to come to speak at the Afro
Speaker 1: German community at the Free University of Berlin. This trip
Speaker 1: turned into a speaking community building journey through several countries.
Speaker 1: While she was in Europe, though her health started to decline.
Speaker 1: She started seeing a homeopathic and anthroposophic doctor who agreed
Speaker 1: with her decision not to have a biopsy and started
Speaker 1: her on a regiment of alternative treatments. In case you've
Speaker 1: not heard of it, anthroposophic medicine combines conventional practice is
Speaker 1: with spirituality and holistic treatments. It's kind of a mind,
Speaker 1: body spirit treatment plan. And after traveling and speaking around Europe,
Speaker 1: Audrey returned to the United States in July of nineteen
Speaker 1: four and after she got back, she had another cat
Speaker 1: scam and the tumor in her liver was the same.
Speaker 1: She took this as an indication that her holistic treatments
Speaker 1: were working, and she decided to continue with that regiment
Speaker 1: and her dietary changes, which mostly focused on consuming fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables, and she continued to write and travel, sometimes
Speaker 1: with Francis and sometimes alone to Cuba, St. Croix, Australia
Speaker 1: and New Zealand, and the fall of ve she started
Speaker 1: having abdominal pain and weakness. Another cat scan revealed another
Speaker 1: tumor in her liver, and the first one had also
Speaker 1: gotten bigger. She found another anthroposophic doctor in New York
Speaker 1: that December. Hunter College named its poetry center after Audrey.
Speaker 1: Not long after that, she and Francis went to Switzerland
Speaker 1: so she could be treated at the Lucas Clinic in
Speaker 1: anthropos topic Clinic for cancer treatment. Doctors there confirmed that
Speaker 1: she had liver cancer and that it had almost certainly
Speaker 1: metastasized from her breast. Audrey stayed through the start of
Speaker 1: January of the next year, and when she got back
Speaker 1: to the States, she saw her regular oncologist who talked
Speaker 1: to her about conventional treatment options. At that point, she
Speaker 1: had a prognosis of about five years to live. She
Speaker 1: took a trip to the Caribbean with Gloria Joseph, whom
Speaker 1: she'd known and been involved with for a long time.
Speaker 1: Their relationship deepened, and Audrey began to pull away from Francis.
Speaker 1: Their relationship, like all relationships, had its ups and downs,
Speaker 1: and Audrey had already been questioning whether it should continue,
Speaker 1: especially as she made pretty significant changes to her diet
Speaker 1: and health regimen that Frances did not make as well.
Speaker 1: They formally and finally split when they sold their Staten
Speaker 1: Island home in Audrey decided to spend the end of
Speaker 1: her life in Saint Croix, which had begun to feel
Speaker 1: like home to her not long before her death. She
Speaker 1: took the name gone Adisa, which means she who makes
Speaker 1: her meaning known. She lived in Saint Croix with Gloria,
Speaker 1: who was a Saint Croix native, until she died on
Speaker 1: November seventeenth. Audi was cremated and she left instructions for
Speaker 1: her ashes to be scattered in several places that had
Speaker 1: meaning to her. Although she often wrote autobiographically, she called
Speaker 1: her book Zombie a new spelling of my name, a
Speaker 1: bio mythography. Uh. There is currently only one written biography
Speaker 1: of her, which Tracy mentioned at the top of our
Speaker 1: first part of this two parter, which is called Warrior Poet,
Speaker 1: a biography of Audrey Lord, and it's by Alexis de Vaux.
Speaker 1: It's very thorough, as Tracy said, it's really well sourced
Speaker 1: and it includes a great deal of detail about her life. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the author I think must have read every scrap
Speaker 1: of paper that was available to her that Audrey herself
Speaker 1: had written correspondence all of her essays to construct a
Speaker 1: pretty detailed glimpse of her life that goes into a
Speaker 1: lot of detail that, uh, we haven't really talked about
Speaker 1: here specifically. It also seems pretty silly to have two
Speaker 1: episodes talking about a poet without actually including any of
Speaker 1: her poetry. So I tried to find a poem that
Speaker 1: would be both accessible to people um and also include
Speaker 1: a lot of the themes that we've talked about in
Speaker 1: and how Audrey lived her life, and the things that
Speaker 1: she believed in, and the things the themes that were
Speaker 1: common in her work. So the Charlotte Sheety Literary Agent
Speaker 1: Agency graciously gave us permission to read this poem um,
Speaker 1: which was originally published by W. W. Norton, which publishes
Speaker 1: many of the other collections of Audrey's work, and us
Speaker 1: also the publisher of the book Warrior Poet, and this
Speaker 1: poem is called who said it was simple. There are
Speaker 1: so many roots to the tree of anger that sometimes
Speaker 1: the branches shatter before they bear. Sitting in needics, the
Speaker 1: women rallied four They march discussing the problematic girls they
Speaker 1: hire to make them free. An almost white counterman passes,
Speaker 1: awaiting brother to serve them first, and the ladies neither
Speaker 1: noticed nor reject the slighter pleasures of their slavery. But I,
Speaker 1: who am bound by my mirror as well as my bed,
Speaker 1: see cause in color as well as sex, and sit
Speaker 1: here wondering which me will survive all these liberations. Was
Speaker 1: originally published in I'm quite fond of Audrey Lord. Yeah,
Speaker 1: her story is so interesting and it is one of
Speaker 1: the things that always touches me When I hear stories
Speaker 1: about people being so ahead of their time, particularly and
Speaker 1: kind of uh social norms. I'm always fascinated because often
Speaker 1: it seems like we don't hear that much about it.
Speaker 1: I I majored in literature in school, as some of
Speaker 1: you may know, uh, and a lot of times when
Speaker 1: we're talking about poets and other writers, the focus is
Speaker 1: really on their work, and and sometimes, at least when
Speaker 1: I was in school, there was some conversation about the
Speaker 1: factors of a person's life that led them to this work.
Speaker 1: But that's often not really what most of the time
Speaker 1: has spent time. So while I knew a few little
Speaker 1: snippets about Audrey Lord's life. I really liked getting to
Speaker 1: know more of it. Uh so yeah, maybe we will
Speaker 1: talk about more writers at some point in the future.
Speaker 1: I had a very similar well, I had a similar
Speaker 1: experience studying literature in college, which is that I realized
Speaker 1: pretty early into my major, like, I like the literature,
Speaker 1: but I'm really fascinated by the biographies behind them. So
Speaker 1: do you have a little bit of listener mail? Listener mail?
Speaker 1: This is another piece of listener mail about our Mendez
Speaker 1: versus Westminster episode. This one is from a Skina who
Speaker 1: noted that the last time she wrote to us was
Speaker 1: back in the Pop Stuff days. Hi, we also missed
Speaker 1: pop stuff? Uh? She says, I have listened to this
Speaker 1: podcast since the fact or Fiction days, which is so
Speaker 1: long ago, when when stuff you missed in history class
Speaker 1: was called fact in fiction and had Josh Clark of
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is one of the co hosts.
Speaker 1: Which sometimes when I send people a link to an
Speaker 1: episode from that era that they've asked for, they get
Speaker 1: completely flabbergasted at who the hosts were way back then.
Speaker 1: She says. The Mendes versus Westminster episode finally prompted me
Speaker 1: to write in so I can tell you my own
Speaker 1: story of the lingering prejudiced against speaking a foreign language
Speaker 1: in the United States. I was born in Poland, but
Speaker 1: I was only six months old when my parents and
Speaker 1: I immigrated to the United States, settling in the Philadelphia area.
Speaker 1: My mom didn't speak English when we arrived here. She
Speaker 1: did speak Polish, Russian, Yiddish, and German, but not English.
Speaker 1: Not wanting me to learn English with an accent, she
Speaker 1: and my dad only spoke to me in Polish. It
Speaker 1: was my first language. I learned English from going to stores,
Speaker 1: talking to neighbors, and above all, from Sesame Street. By
Speaker 1: the time I was three, I was fluent, well three
Speaker 1: year old fluent in both languages. I first heard my
Speaker 1: mom speak English when I was five, and boy was
Speaker 1: I surprised that she could. I went to elementary school
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, and I very much remember how
Speaker 1: the kids liked to make dumb poll act jokes, which
Speaker 1: I always found strange because I was a straight A student.
Speaker 1: But the story I have is about my reading teacher
Speaker 1: in third grade. So around nineteen seventy it was open
Speaker 1: house night at the beginning of the year and I
Speaker 1: guess because the school knew that many parents couldn't afford babysitters,
Speaker 1: kids were allowed to come. I remember it looking over
Speaker 1: and seeing that my mom and my teacher were having
Speaker 1: a let's call it an animated discussion. There wasn't any
Speaker 1: yelling or anything, but I could tell that my mom
Speaker 1: was not amused. As soon as I could, I asked
Speaker 1: her what had happened, and she wouldn't tell me. She
Speaker 1: just said, teacher and I didn't agree on something, but
Speaker 1: you don't need to worry about it. She actually said
Speaker 1: this in Polish. Justina uh tells what it was in Polish,
Speaker 1: but as I do not speak Polish, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to mangle that. It was clear that my mom wasn't
Speaker 1: going to tell me, and pretty soon I forgot all
Speaker 1: about the incident. Had a good year, and I got
Speaker 1: a solid a. It was only after the school year
Speaker 1: was over that my mom finally told me what had
Speaker 1: gone down. That evening, my mom had introduced herself and
Speaker 1: my teacher had immediately launched into a speech about how
Speaker 1: my parents needed to stop speaking to me in Polish,
Speaker 1: that speaking a second language at such a young age
Speaker 1: was interfering with my ability to speak English. My mom
Speaker 1: was having none of that. After a little back and forth,
Speaker 1: she ended with, if you were a good teacher, and
Speaker 1: I think that you are despite what you just said,
Speaker 1: then you will teach my daughter to the best of
Speaker 1: your ability, and you will see that rather than making
Speaker 1: her English weak, speaking Polish makes her English stronger. My
Speaker 1: mom was very happy when she met with the teacher
Speaker 1: at the parent conference a few months later, and my
Speaker 1: teacher apologized to her for what she had said at
Speaker 1: the open house. I don't know if you if polish
Speaker 1: makes your daughters English stronger, but it certainly doesn't make
Speaker 1: it weaker. She's my best student, she said. It made
Speaker 1: my mom's day, week, and year. I'm not certain who
Speaker 1: in attitudes about being bilingual changed in the United States,
Speaker 1: but it happened right around oblivious to me. When I
Speaker 1: was little, the fact that I spoke two languages was
Speaker 1: considered a negative. By the time I headed off to college,
Speaker 1: it was a positive and considered cool by my peers.
Speaker 1: Thank goodness for that. Keep out the good work. I
Speaker 1: always learned something new in every episode, so thank you regards. Justina.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Justina. It's a really fun story.
Speaker 1: I love this it's like I simultaneously loved this story
Speaker 1: and hate that the teacher said that in the first place. Um,
Speaker 1: And I think a point that we had made in
Speaker 1: the in the Mendes versus Westminster podcast is it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of strange to look back in history and see
Speaker 1: what a huge prejudice there was against people who didn't
Speaker 1: speak English when today, like parents will put their infants
Speaker 1: on waiting lists for second language immercial schools in the
Speaker 1: hope that they will actually be able to go. But
Speaker 1: that's complete change in thinking. UM. So thank you again, Justina.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or anything else, you can. We are at History Podcast
Speaker 1: at Discovery dot com. We're also on Facebook at Facebook
Speaker 1: dot com, slash history flash Stuff and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: miss in History. Are tumbler is at missed in History
Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com, and we are pinning away on Pinterest.
Speaker 1: If you come to our website and you want to
Speaker 1: learn about something that we have talked about today, you
Speaker 1: can put the word feminist in the search bar. You
Speaker 1: will find top five feminist movements. One of these is
Speaker 1: black feminism, and it discusses the way that that this
Speaker 1: is different between white communities and black communities, which is
Speaker 1: a whole other episode. Um that actually are our companions
Speaker 1: at stuff I've never told you have also been speaking
Speaker 1: about lately. You can do all of that and a
Speaker 1: whole lot more at our website, which is how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot um for more on this and thousands of
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