MacDonald is an instructor of English Literature and media studies. In this essay, MacDonald considers Lorde's poetry in light of her feminist political ambitions and strong belief in both the "Black mother in us all" and the need to understand the difference.

"What My Child Learns of the Sea," is, like most Lorde poems, a controlled emotional frenzy full of carefully constructed metaphors and cleverly placed images. Moreover, the politics that Lorde advocated in the 1990s are already clearly evident in her poetry in the 1960s.

Audre Lorde's poetry is filled with both a controlled rage and an optimistic voice. As Maggie Humm notes in A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Feminist Literary Criticism, Lorde certified that she was a "Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two." Indeed, this self proclamation is deliberately without punctuation in order to ensure that racism and homophobia are not given the chance...