Audre Lorde was born on February 18, 1934 in New York City to immigrant parents from the West Indies. He learned to speak, read and write somewhere around the age of four and wrote his first poem in eighth grade, which was later published in Seventeen magazine. In 1962, Lorde married a man named Edward Rollins and had two children before divorcing in 1970. However, in 1968 he moved to Tougaloo, Mississippi, and met his longtime partner, Frances Clayton. His early poems were often romantic, but in the 1960s they became more politically focused due to the amount of civil unrest combined with confusion over his own sexuality. At the time many of his poems were written, more than a fifth of the nation lived below the poverty line, and recently introduced television, which presented a highly stereotyped image of the happy American family, led to further oppression of minorities in America. (SparkNotes editors). Throughout the literature of the 1950s, there was an overwhelming idea of ​​rebellion as authors such as Allan Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac sought to reject “the uniform culture of the middle class and sought to overturn the sexual and social conservatism of the period” (SparkNotes Editors). They led a group of nonconformists who, along with many American college students, joined protests against racial segregation, the death penalty, nuclear weapons, and other largely unquestioned issues of American life in the 1950s. I find her work extremely compelling and significant in how it seeks to overcome notions of patriarchal power, as well as the systematic oppression and denial of human rights of minority groups such as blacks, feminists, women and lesbians. She uses both feminist and cultural theories in her work... middle of paper......dre-lorde>."Audre Lorde." Poet.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. December 15, 2013. "Audre Lorde Quotes." Happy readings. Np, nd Web. 14 December 2013. .Bradley, Becky. "1950-1959." American cultural history. Lone Star College-Kingwood Library, 1998. Web. February 7, 2011. Lorde, Audre. "Coal." Poems and poets. Poetry Foundation, nd Web. 15 December 2013. .Lorde, Audre. "The Black Unicorn." The Black Unicorn Poems by Audre Lorde. New York: W. W. Norton &, 1995. 3. Print.SparkNotes Publishers. “SparkNote on the Social Trends of the 1950s.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Network. 14 December. 2013.