Lords Illustrations

Lorde uses many different way to describe her teachers from colorful metaphors about the way they ran the class as in the case of Sister Mary of Perpetual Help by explaining that she ruled “with an iron hand in the shape of a cross” and her being a “disciplinarian of the first order” to show how she was quick to punish the students for infractions, large or small.
Another would be the characterization of the librarian that introduced her to books. She portrays her initial reaction to the librarian being “yet another mile-high woman about to do me in.” Then she continues to explain the particulars of her eyes and her soft voice.
Lorde did not limit herself to physical descriptions though, I particularly liked how she depicted her kindergarten teacher. For the description of her teacher Ms Taylor she talks about how “her voice smiled a big smile” and going on to explain that even after all the years she can still remember what her voice sounded like but she cannot remember a thing about her physical appearance.