Post- world War II, Victorian Female, and Romantic Period Female Literature Comparison of Language

Audre Lorde (1934–1992)

Poet, novelist, essayist, academic, and LGBTQIA+ icon Audre Lorde was raised in New York as the daughter of strict immigrants from Grenada and Barbados. An accomplished poet and teacher, she wrote several books of poetry—but it wasn’t until Coal, her first major collection published in 1976, that she declared her identity as “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” and achieved wider recognition. 
In the eighties, Lorde’s work took on a new tone, examining the nature of illness as she reflected on her battle with breast cancer. Lorde discussed her lesbian identity in many of her works, including Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name —A Biomythography. She wrote one of her most important essays in 1984, “The Master’s Tools Will Not Dismantle the Master’s House,” which criticized racism within feminism and has been canonized as a foundational text in feminist and gender studies courses across the United States. Both the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center and The Audre Lorde Project, are named for the activist. Lorde died of breast cancer in 1992.

Leslie Marmon Silko (1948–)

Leslie Marmon Silko is a key figure to the Native American literary and artistic renaissance, from the late 1960s onward. She is most celebrated for her novel Ceremony, but she has also composed a wealth of poetry, short stories, and essays. Of Laguna Pueblo and Mexican descent, Silko grew up on the edge of a reservation and channeled the stories of her people into her work. Her widely lauded novel, Ceremony—widely read in school literature curricula as a significant work by one of America’s preeminent contemporary Native American authors—was written in Ketchikan, Alaska, where Silko moved to in 1973. The novel details the life of an injured World War II veteran who conquers alcoholism and trauma by rediscovering his Native American roots. 
Silko won the Pushcart Prize for Poetry for Laguna Woman: Poems and is a recipient of the MacArthur “Genius Grant.”