Presentation: Audre Lorde’s The Black Unicorn

A discussion of Audre Lorde's intersectionality through her work in the book, The Black Unicorn. 

Intersectionality “reminds us that oppression cannot be reduced to one fundamental type and that oppressions work together to produce social injustice.” Audre Lorde’s self-proclamation as a “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” demonstrates her awareness of the complexities of identities and the impact those identities have on our experience within the global context. Dr. Crystal Edwards will explore the themes presented by Lorde in one of her most notable works, The Black Unicorn. Poems from the book will be read by poet, Yeva Johnson, along with one original poem inspired by Lorde. 

Dr. Crystal Edwards graduated from the Department of Africology with a Ph.D. in Africana Studies and a graduate certificate in Educational Policy from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Generally, her work centers the subjective experience of African descended people throughout the Diaspora, specifically the in the United States. Specifically, her work seeks to make visible the intersectional realities of African American women and girls, in their own voices. Dr. Edwards is an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator in the Africana Studies Department at San Francisco State University. 

Yeva Johnson, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and musician whose work appears or is forthcoming in Bellingham Review, Essential Truths:  The Bay Area in Color Anthology, Obsidian, sin cesar, Sinister Wisdom, When We Exhale Anthology, Yemassee, and elsewhere, explores interlocking caste systems and possibilities for human co-existence in our biosphere.  Yeva is a past Show Us Your Spines Artist-in-Residence (RADAR Productions/San Francisco Public Library), a Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow at Mesa Refuge in 2022, Brown Handler Resident 2023-2024, and poet in QTPOC4SHO, a San Francisco Bay Area artists’ collective. She Co-edited Joan Nestle’s book A Sturdy Yes of a People, a Sinister Wisdom Sapphic Classic. Her debut chapbook, Analog Poet Blues, was published by Nomadic Press in 2023.