Her poetry increasingly dealt with multiple identities. Raised in Harlem by Caribbean immigrant parents, she had been one of the few black women within the lesbian bar culture that flourished in post-World War II New York City. Lorde knew firsthand the dilemmas of bridging cultures. Her influential remarks impelled women’s studies courses, programs, and conferences to expand their vision and embrace, rather than fear, differences among women. At an academic feminist conference commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, the lesbian poet and literature professor Audre Lorde articulated the frustrations of women treated as tokens, the sole black or lesbian speaker invited to participate in a predominantly white movement. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” Preface: In the 1970s, women of color and lesbians in the United States called on feminist scholars to recognize their own discriminatory practices and to analyze the intersections of racial, sexual, and gender hierarchies.
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