Audre Lorde was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” who dedicated her life to addressing civil and social injustice. The Selected Work of Audre Lorde, edited by Roxane Gay, is about half prose and half poetry. The prose consists of essays on the aforesaid subjects and entries from diaries Lorde kept during her battle with cancer and published in The Cancer Journal and A Burst of Light. The poetry, much of it very angry, is selected from books during successive stages of her career. While Audre Lorde passed away in 1992, she remains an important figure. If you read what she was writing in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, you’ll see it syncs with what writers having a similar focus today are writing. Here’s what The New York Times says: