Google honors poet, civil rights champion Audre Lorde with new Doodle

Feb. 18 (UPI) -- Google is celebrating poet, feminist, professor and civil rights champion Audre Lorde with a new Doodle, in honor of Black History Month.

Google's homepage features artwork from guest artist Monica Ahanonu. The Doodle shows some of Lorde's published prose alongside additional artwork.

"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle, because we do not lead single-issue lives. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future with the particular strength of our individual identities," the prose reads.

Lorde was born in 1934 in Harlem, New York City, and started writing her own poems by the eighth grade. She became the first Black student at Hunter High School, which was for gifted girls. Her poem Spring was rejected by the school, but was published in Seventeen magazine when she was 15-years-old.

Lorde confronted homophobia and racism in her first collection of poems, 1968's The First Cities. Her work often explored identity, sexuality and social and racial justice.

She taught poetry at the Free University in Berlin, Germany, where she helped spark the Afro-German movement of the 1980s. She released a collection of essays in 1984 titled Sister Outsider.

Lorde was awarded the American Book Award in 1989 and was honored as the poet laureate of New York State through the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit in 1991.

Google also released a behind-the-scenes video detailing Lorde's life and the creation of the Doodle.