Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934, to Caribbean immigrants. Her father, Frederick Byron Lorde (known as Byron), hailed from Barbados and her mother, Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde, was Grenadian and was born on the island of Carriacou. Lorde's mother was of mixed ancestry but could pass for Spanish,[6] which was a source of pride for her family. Lorde's father was darker than the Belmar family liked, and they only allowed the couple to marry because of Byron's charm, ambition, and persistence.[7] The new family settled in Harlem. Nearsighted to the point of being legally blind and the youngest of three daughters (her two older sisters were named Phyllis and Helen), Lorde grew up hearing her mother's stories about the West Indies. At the age of four, she learned to talk while she learned to read, and her mother taught her to write at around the same time. She wrote her first poem when she was in eighth grade.
Born as Audrey Geraldine Lorde, she chose to drop the "y" from her first name while still a child, explaining in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name that she was more interested in the artistic symmetry of the "e"-endings in the two side-by-side names "Audre Lorde" than in spelling her name the way her parents had intended.[8][6]
Lorde's relationship with her parents was difficult from a young age. She spent very little time with her father and mother, who were both busy maintaining their real estate business in the tumultuous economy after the Great Depression. When she did see them, they were often cold or emotionally distant. In particular, Lorde's relationship with her mother, who was deeply suspicious of people with darker skin than hers (which Lorde had) and the outside world in general, was characterized by "tough love" and strict adherence to family rules.[9] Lorde's difficult relationship with her mother figured prominently in her later poems, such as Coal's "Story Books on a Kitchen Table."[3]
As a child, Lorde struggled with communication, and came to appreciate the power of poetry as a form of expression.[10] In fact, she describes herself as thinking in poetry.[11] She also memorized a great deal of poetry, and would use it to communicate, to the extent that, "If asked how she was feeling, Audre would reply by reciting a poem."[12] Around the age of twelve, she began writing her own poetry and connecting with others at her school who were considered "outcasts", as she felt she was.[12]
Raised Catholic, Lorde attended parochial schools before moving on to Hunter College High School, a secondary school for intellectually gifted students. She graduated in 1951. While attending Hunter, Lorde published her first poem in Seventeen magazine after her school's literary journal rejected it for being inappropriate. Also in high school, Lorde participated in poetry workshops sponsored by the Harlem Writers Guild, but noted that she always felt like somewhat of an outcast from the Guild. She felt she was not accepted because she "was both crazy and queer but [they thought] I would grow out of it all."[10][13][14]
Zami places her father's death from a stroke around New Year's 1953.[15]
