Audre Lorde, poet and activist, inspires Google Doodle for Black History Month

Artist Monica Ahanonu created the work for what would have been Lorde's 87th birthday.
 By 
Rachel Thompson
 on 
Audre Lorde, poet and activist, inspires Google Doodle for Black History Month

Audre Lorde, the American poet, civil rights activist, feminist, and professor, is honoured in today's Google Doodle.

The illustration of the self-described "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" was created by Los Angeles-based artist Monica Ahanonu.

The doodle features an excerpt from Lorde's 1982 speech "Learning from the 60s," delivered at Harvard University as part of a weekend-long celebration of civil rights activist Malcolm X.


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Audre Lorde lectures students at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida in 1983. Credit: Robert Alexander/Archive Photos/Getty ImageS

Lorde was born in 1934 in New York City. Her parents were immigrants from the Caribbean, her father from Barbados, and her mother was Grenadian. Lorde spent her life and creative output fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism.

A graduate of Hunter College and Columbia University, Lorde worked as a librarian during the '60s, and in 1968 she became writer-in-residence at Tougaloo College, Mississippi. Lorde was poet laureate of New York between 1991 and 1992.

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Credit: google

Throughout Black History Month, which takes place annually in February in the U.S. and Canada, Google is paying tribute to Black artists via the YouTube homepage every Monday. From today, you can also customise your Chrome browser from a new collection of themes designed by Black artists.

Google has chosen Feb. 18 to honour Lorde because it would have been her 87th birthday. Lorde passed away from breast cancer in 1992 at the age of 58. 

Rachel Thompson, sits wearing a dress with yellow florals and black background.
Rachel Thompson
Features Editor

Rachel Thompson is the Features Editor at Mashable. Rachel's second non-fiction book The Love Fix: Reclaiming Intimacy in a Disconnected World is out now, published by Penguin Random House in Jan. 2025. The Love Fix explores why dating feels so hard right now, why we experience difficult emotions in the realm of love, and how we can change our dating culture for the better.

A leading sex and dating writer in the UK, Rachel has written for GQ, The Guardian, The Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Stylist, ELLE, The i Paper, Refinery29, and many more.

Rachel's first book Rough: How Violence Has Found Its Way Into the Bedroom And What We Can Do About It, a non-fiction investigation into sexual violence was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.

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