TFW’s Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Alexis Pauline Gumbs Honor Audre Lorde in Feminist Studies

Audre Lorde
©Dagmar Schultz

This past spring, Feminist Studies commemorated Black Lesbian Feminist Mother Warrior Poet Audre Lorde in the 80th anniversary year of her birth with a cluster of four essays written by TFW Associate Editor Aishah Shahidah Simmons, TFW Editorial Collective member Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Lyndon K. Gill, and Dagmar Schultz.

Simmons’ “Excerpts from Silence…Broken: Audre Lorde’s Indelible Imprint on My Life,” Gumbs’ “Repetition Is Sacred: School of Our Lorde, Mobile Homecoming, and Legacy in Flight” (Poetic Nonfiction), Gill’s “In the Realm of Our Lorde: Eros and the Poet Philosopher,” and Schultz’s “Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years, 1984 to 1992: The Making of the Film and Its Reception,” according to Feminist Studies editorial collective members Stephanie Gilmore (who is also a member of TFW’s editorial collective) and Michelle V. Rowley, “heal and serve as a clarion call to action in neoliberal times.”

From the website, “Founded in 1972, Feminist Studies was the first scholarly journal in women’s studies and remains a flagship publication with a record of breaking new ground in the field. Whether drawing from the complex past or the shifting present, the pieces that appear in Feminist Studies raise social and political questions that intimately and significantly affect women and men around the world.” Current editors include Evie Shockley, Matt Richardson, Ashwini Tamble, and Kamal Visweswaran, among others, while past editors include Heidi Hartmann, Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Layli Maparyan, and Beth Ritchie, among others.