Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Allen Lane, £35

SOME TIME in the 1970s, probably at an event in the San Francisco Bay Area, I heard Audre Lorde read a poem. I don’t remember the poem, but do remember her reading of it demanded my attention.  

I was slightly familiar with her work up to then, mostly because of my female friends, gay and straight, whose bookshelves often included a couple of her books. In addition, the Kitchen Table Press, which she helped found, was an inspiration to my friends and I who hoped to write and publish something ourselves someday.  

I read From a Land Where Other People Live and New York Head Shop and Museum — the former was nominated for a National Book Award and the second had an intriguing title with poems that demanded both an intellectual and emotional response.