Outlaw Marriages by Rodger Streitmatter

Uruguay,”
New York Times
, April 16, 2008.
CHAPTER 15: FRANCES CLAYTON & AUDRE LORDE, 1968–1988
    1 . On Clayton’s early years, Alexis De Veaux,
Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2004), 97; Rodger Streitmatter telephone interview with Frances Clayton, July 22, 2011. Clayton’s parents were the Reverend James Madison Clayton and Georgia Frances Myra Mae Blessing Clayton.
    2 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 97; Streitmatter interview with Clayton.
    3 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 97; Streitmatter interview with Clayton.
    4 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 97; Streitmatter interview with Clayton.
    5 . On Lorde’s early years, see Blanche Wiesen Cook and Clare M. Coss, “Audre Lorde,” in
Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century
, Susan Ware, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), 394–96; De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, especially 11–13; Joan Wylie Hall, ed.,
Conversations with Audre Lorde
(Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2004), xix-xxv. Lorde’s parents were Frederick Byron Lorde and Linda Gertrude Belmar Lorde.
    6 . Hall,
Conversations
, xix.
    7 . Karla M. Hammond, “Audre Lorde: Interview,” in Hall,
Conversations
, 34.
    8 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 62; Hall,
Conversations
, xix-xx.
    9 . Hall,
Conversations
, xx; Margaret Homan, “Audre Lorde,” in Darlene Clark Hine, ed.,
Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia
(Brooklyn, NY: Carlson, 1993), 732.
    10 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 77.
    11 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 73–75; Streitmatter interview with Blanche Wiesen Cook and Clare M. Coss, October 29, 2011.
    12 . Ibid., 80; Hall,
Conversations
, xx.
    13 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 81–84; Hall,
Conversations
, xx.
    14 .De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 88, 93.
    15 . Ibid., 94; Hall,
Conversations
, xx.
    16 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 94–95; Hall,
Conversations
, xx.
    17 . Cook and Coss, “Audre Lorde,” 395; De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 96; Hall,
Conversations
, xx.
    18 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 97; Hammond, “Audre Lorde: Interview,” 33; Homan, “Audre Lorde,” 732; Streitmatter interview with Cook and Coss; Adrienne Rich, “An Interview with Audre Lorde,” in Hall,
Conversations
, 56.
    19 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 102–106; Hall,
Conversations
, xx. Lorde initially taught at City College and then moved to Herbert H. Lehman College and later to John Jay College of Criminal Justice; all three colleges are part of the City University of New York system.
    20 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 113; Hall,
Conversations
, 58.
    21 . The quote is from Streitmatter interview with Clayton. See also De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 113, 121–22.
    22 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 125.
    23 . Ibid., 123, 126.
    24 . Audre Lorde,
The First Cities
(New York: Poets Press, 1968); Dudley Randall,
Negro Digest
17 (1968): 13; Audre Lorde,
Cables to Rage
(London: Paul Breman, 1970); Mike Doyle, “Made in Canada,”
Poetry
, March 1972, 357.
    25 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 153; Audre Lorde,
From a Land Where Other People Live
(Detroit: Broadside Press, 1973); Audre Lorde,
New York Head Shop and Museum
(Detroit: Broadside Press, 1974).
    26 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 156; Hall,
Conversations
, xxi, 57.
    27 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 156–57.
    28 . Audre Lorde,
The Black Unicorn: Poems
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 3; Audre Lorde,
Coal
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1976).
    29 . “The Black Unicorn,”
Choice
, March 1979, 80; Hayden Carruth, “A Year’s Poetry,”
Nation
, December 23, 1978, 712; R. B. Stepto, “The Phenomenal Woman and the Severed Daughter,”
Parnassus
, Fall-Winter 1979, 312.
    30 . De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 161, 163, 172; Hall,
Conversations
, xxii.
    31 . Joseph F. Beam, “An Interview with Audre Lorde,” in Hall,
Conversations
, 128; De Veaux,
Warrior Poet
, 126, 163, 322; Dagmar Schultz, “Audre Lorde on Her