Outlaw Marriages (30 page)

Lorde's first collection of poems, titled
The First Cities
, had been reviewed
only by the
Negro Digest
, which described the volume as a “quiet, introspective book.” That critique had been enough to prompt another small press to publish a second collection of her poems, with the sole review this time being more critical, the journal
Poetry
stating, “Lorde writes free verse of no particular note.”
24

Broadside Press published two more collections of Lorde's poems. One, titled
From a Land Where Other People Live
, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1973; yet neither book was widely reviewed, which Lorde found discouraging.
25

Frances Clayton wasn't familiar with the small presses that specialized in poetry, but her academic experience at a prestigious university made her knowledgeable about mainstream publishing. She and Lorde then discussed strategies and decided it was time to find a literary agent.
26

After the couple researched which agents were working with feminist topics, Lorde contacted Charlotte Sheedy, who immediately agreed to represent her.
27

During the late 1970s, Lorde's work received many positive critiques, establishing her as a gifted poet. Reviewers wrote their laudatory comments about two of her collections, both published by W. W. Norton.

The central metaphor driving the first book, titled
Coal
, was that the dark-skinned people of the world were like coal—dug from the earth to fuel the factories that gave industrialized societies their wealth. In the second book, titled
The Black Unicorn
, Lorde focused on the oppression that defined the black experience, with the initial poem stating:

The black unicorn is restless

the black unicorn is unrelenting

the black unicorn is not

free.
28

Both books were reviewed in literary as well as general-interest publications. The journal
Choice
praised Lorde's poetry as “rich and startling in its speed and fervor,” while the
Nation
pronounced her prose “brilliant and honest.” The poetry journal
Parnassus
lauded Lorde's voice as “invigorating” and “powerful,” going on to say that having her work released by a major publisher ranked as “a seminal event in the evolution of contemporary letters.”
29

These positive reviews combined with Lorde being one of the few published poets who was a lesbian—by this point, she and Clayton were both
comfortable being identified as gay women—brought a stream of requests for her to give readings. And so, Lorde began traveling to university campuses and feminist bookstores across the country. She also represented the United States at a writing conference in Russia in 1976 and at an arts festival in Nigeria in 1977. And in the final year of the decade, she was a featured speaker at the rally following the historic March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in Washington, D.C.
30

When Lorde made these trips, Clayton stayed at home and took care of Elizabeth and Jonathan, while also often paying the bulk of Lorde's travel expenses. It had been a challenge for Clayton, when she and Lorde started living together, to adjust to being part of a household with two children, as she'd never been around young people before. And now, only a few years later, she was taking sole responsibility for a pair of teenagers for as long as a month at a time.
31

An even bigger change came in Clayton's career. After teaching at Queens College for three years, she decided to move into psychotherapy. It took her several years to make the transition, initially taking courses part-time while continuing to teach at Queens, and then being supervised by practicing psychotherapists.
32

By the late 1970s, Clayton had established a private practice in Manhattan. As one of the first certified counselors in New York City who was openly lesbian, she soon had far more clients than she could fit into her schedule. Clayton also quickly gained a reputation as a highly principled professional who had a unique talent for working with other gay women. Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins said, many years later, “Frances provided an incredible service to any number of lesbians. Many women of that period were struggling to become comfortable with their sexuality, and Frances guided them through that process. Totally aside from what she did for my mother, she was an extraordinary woman in her own right.”
33

In 1978, Clayton and Lorde's life was turned upside down when Lorde found what turned out to be a malignant lump in her right breast. She turned to Clayton for emotional support as well as help in learning about the disease and her options for fighting it, ultimately deciding to have a mastectomy.
34

Lorde then wrote a memoir about her experience. In
The Cancer Journals
, she spoke candidly about the decision of whether to have reconstructive surgery so that it would look, to other people, like she still had two breasts. She rejected the idea, she wrote, because she didn't want to send the message
that she was ashamed of what had happened to her. “Women have been programmed,” Lorde said, “to view our bodies only in terms of how they look and feel to others, rather than how they feel to ourselves.”
35

Her memoir was extremely well received. Among the most high-profile reviews was one in
Ms
., then at the height of its popularity. The feminist magazine praised the author for writing with a “shimmering urgency,” going on to say, “Lorde describes how and why she came to reject the false comfort conventionally offered to the post-mastectomy woman and the lie embodied in the prosthetic breast:
You will be the same as before
.”
36

Lorde's success with the memoir propelled her to write an experimental book in a genre she called biomythography.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
told of a young Audre coming of age as the daughter of West Indian immigrants—“zami” is a pejorative Caribbean word for lesbian. The book advised against dark-skinned girls trying to fit into the white world. Instead,
Zami
argued that home and culture are concepts that feminists don't have to define based solely on race or nationality but can find within communities of supportive women.
37

Reviews of
Zami
reinforced Lorde's place as one of the country's preeminent women writers. The
New York Times
called
Zami
“an excellent and evocative autobiography.” The paper continued, “Lorde's experiences are painted with exquisite imagery. Her West Indian heritage shows through most clearly in her use of word pictures that are sensual, steamy, at times near-tropical, evoking the colors, smells—repeatedly, the smells—shapes, textures that are her life.”
38

The consistently positive reviews led to a boost in Lorde's academic career. Now that her creative gifts were well documented, the English faculty at Hunter College recruited her to fill a position as a poet. Lorde began the job in September 1981.
39

While Lorde and Clayton both were soaring to new heights professionally, signs of trouble were beginning to emerge in their relationship.
40

The problem had to do with a dramatic difference in how they approached their outlaw marriage. Clayton wanted them to be monogamous, but Lorde insisted on an open relationship. What's more, each woman expected the other one to change. Clayton felt hurt and betrayed by Lorde's outside life; Lorde felt constrained and misunderstood by Clayton's anger and discontent. This division in their perception and reality caused increasing unhappiness and discontent.
41

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Lorde had published articles in several literary journals and had given speeches at numerous conferences. In 1984, she collected fifteen of these works—expanding some of them—into a book of essays that ultimately became a classic text that's since been read by generations of women's studies students.
42

The most contentious argument in
Sister Outsider
was that the women's liberation movement was racist. Lorde argued that white feminists consistently denigrated women of color, supporting her charge with examples from her own personal experiences.
43

She began one essay by describing how she'd asked a white woman, at the end of a weeklong conference on race, what she'd gained from the event. The woman had responded, “I feel black women really understand me a lot better now.” Lorde reacted to that statement by writing, in an angry tone, “As if understanding
her
lay at the core of the race problem.” In that same essay, Lorde recalled an instance in which a white poet had interrupted the reading of works by women of color to read her own poem and then rush off to participate in what she announced to the other women was an “important” panel.
44

Because of such incidents, Lorde said women of color should be outraged at the racism that permeated the women's liberation movement. In a statement directed at white feminists, she said, “I cannot hide my anger to spare you guilt, for to do so insults and trivializes all our efforts.” In another passage, she said, “We cannot allow our fear of anger to deflect us nor seduce us into settling for anything less than the hard work of excavating honesty.”
45

Critics gave
Sister Outsider
rave reviews.
Essence
, the widely circulated magazine aimed at African American women, applauded Lorde for writing “in a no-nonsense manner” and then said, “The works in the book add up to a personal, thought-provoking portrait of a multifaceted artist.” The
Village Voice
, the country's leading alternative newspaper, described Lorde as an “erudite black lesbian feminist” and said of her book, “The provocative ideas of
Sister Outsider
will unsettle some readers, and that's just what Lorde intends.”
46

By the early 1980s, Lorde was widely known not only as a literary figure but also as a social and political activist who was fighting global injustice on any number of fronts.
47

She had, for many years, been involved in the civil rights struggle in the United States. In 1963, for example, she'd traveled to the nation's capital to participate in the historic March on Washington. Sexism, racism, and homophobia also had been central themes in Lorde's poetry. And so, when she became a widely respected artist, she helped build and lead institutions and
organizations committed to changing the world.
48

In 1980, she joined half a dozen other women to found Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. They created the publishing enterprise to ensure that the words being written by black, Latina, and Asian women found their way into print. Lorde played a key role in raising funds for Kitchen Table by speaking at numerous benefits. To strengthen the publisher's reputation, she had her next book,
I Am Your Sister
, released by the fledgling publisher rather than by Norton.
49

Lorde's activism moved to the international stage in 1981 when she helped found Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa. The group's goal was to encourage personal bonds between black women living in the United States and in South Africa as a step toward ending apartheid. Again, Lorde's involvement included giving readings to raise money that financed the organization's work. By this point, she often concluded her presentations with a challenge to her audience: “Applause is easy. Go out and do something.”
50

In mid-1984, Lorde began having problems digesting food. Her doctor, fearing the cancer in her breast from six years earlier had metastasized, conducted tests that found a tumor in her liver. Lorde rejected the possibility that the cancer had returned, continuing her rigorous schedule of writing, teaching, and traveling.
51

Lorde and Clayton went to Vermont for a vacation after the school year ended, but the retreat didn't work for them. Lorde had become seriously involved with a woman named Gloria Joseph, and Clayton sensed the decline of their love during the vacation. Lorde experienced Clayton as being “negative” and longed to be with her lover. Clayton was equally miserable because she didn't understand, not knowing about her partner's other relationship, why Lorde was so distracted and distant.
52

Gloria Joseph taught sociology at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She and Lorde had met in 1979 at a retreat for black feminists, and their paths had crossed again two years later when Lorde attended a symposium that Joseph, a native of the Virgin Islands, had hosted at her vacation home on the island of St. Croix. They soon realized how much they had in common—both were black women of West Indian heritage, both worked in academia, and both wrote about issues facing women of color.
53

By 1984, the two women had become sexually intimate, and Lorde was traveling to St. Croix whenever she could. She often felt ill by this point, so she not only liked being with Joseph but also enjoyed luxuriating in the tropical weather of the Caribbean.
54

Health problems became a priority for Lorde in 1985 when pain in her
midsection became so intense that she had to seek medical attention. Tests found a second tumor in her liver, prompting her doctor to tell her she definitely had liver cancer.
55