Sister Outsider. Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde (Penguin Vitae, 2020)

In February 2020, Penguin Classics introduced a new hardcover series named Penguin Vitae, sparked by the question “What classic books would you place together on a shelf to represent the course of your life?” The colored and largely typographic covers for this series were designed by Penguin’s creative director Paul Buckley.

Among the first five published titles is Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, which originally came out in 1984 (see the design of the first edition by Crossing Press).

Penguin Classics is honored to publish Sister Outsider, essential nonfiction by black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde. Featuring a foreword by Mahogany L. Browne, this groundbreaking collection of writings on race, gender, and LGBTQ issues is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggles but ultimately offering messages of hope.

For this cover design, Buckley worked with tracked-out PAG Revolucion. Drawn by Ryoichi Tsunekawa and released in 2008 in a single all-caps weight, it was later revised and extended into a full family with lowercase, named Revolution Gothic.