American writer Audre Lorde identifies herself to be a black feminist lesbian mother poet as her identity is rooted in the connection shared by numerous seemingly disparate views, seen once upon a time as incompatible. Regarding themes often seen in her writing, she shows or analyses such things as pride, love, hatred, anxiety, sexism and racism, the harshness of urban living, and a fight for survival. Moreover, she forgoes a depiction of a more ideal humanity by uncovering and discussing truth in what she writes. She declares:
“I feel have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and to share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigating pain.”[1]
Lorde was an outstanding, renowned writer who devotedly explored the prejudice and discrimination experienced by people in a world afraid of that which is not the ‘norm’.
Her seventh poetry compilation, The Black Unicorn, is regarded as her most fleshed-out work and the height of her creative prowess and vision, seen as the zenith of Lorde’s work concerning maturity. In this volume she utilizes symbols and myths connected to Seboulisa, a female deity in African lore, to insert such thematic topics as motherhood, racial pride, bravery, and spiritual revival into her work. Abandoning any form of tightness in her compositions, Lorde here utilises free-running rhythmic forms rooted in African oral rituals and blues tunes originating from the States.
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Supplemented by a profound consciousness rooted in both social and political issues, Lorde’s work gives a unique stance on the predicament of being a black woman. In this work, Lorde covers 300 years of the black hegira to identify African myth as the source for her points regarding women, racial pride, motherhood, and spirituality. She also consolidates her sexual orientation and political stance. In “A Woman Speaks,” in the compilation, the voice declares: “I am woman and not white,” while in the titular piece, the unicorn represents the struggle and the suffering of black people worldwide:
“The black unicorn is restless / the black unicorn is unrelenting / the black unicorn is not free.”[2]
The composition does not simply cover the matter of race, but additionally confronts the indomitable determination of something unquestionably precious which battles against restraint and confinement – essentially, the poem is depicting Lorde. It rebukes prejudice and supports all who battle against obstructive conventions – women, African Americans, homosexuals – especially as they were heavily pushed in the seventies, when The Black Unicorn was created and released.
“The Black Unicorn” notably addresses Lorde’s discovery of her personal self and identity in a harsh and hostile environment. Her own connections as well as expectations enforced by others and society at large perplex as well as encourage her to search for peace and comfort, and somewhere she can belong in a tumultuous world. The poems which cover her more personal feelings and travails combine her relationships with other prominent personal yearnings and problems. Pointedly, in several of her compositions, she mentions or alludes to her mother in ways that imply longing and a desire for guidance and instruction. As an example, in “From the House of Yemanjá,” Lorde says:
“Mother I need / mother I need / mother I need your blackness now / as the august earth needs rain.”
Here, along with referring to Yoruba mythology, as in Yemanjá was the progenitor goddess there, she pleads with her mother to give her advice and bestow guidance upon her, so that she may find her way through a world where she endlessly toils to discover power in her “blackness”.
The last piece of the anthology, “Solstice”, finishes the collection as succinctly and aptly as “The Black Unicorn” starts it. Lorde states:
“May I never remember reasons
for my spirit’s safety
may I never forget
the warning of my woman’s flesh
weeping at the new moon
may I never lose
that terror
that keeps me brave
May I owe nothing
that I cannot repay.”
In these closing statements, she brings many of the challenges and problems she has addressed across her poems to a striking and profound conclusion. She re-evaluates the challenges she has fought against and instead seems to assert that her trials have only strengthened her. This being the final piece, Lorde hints towards confidence when confronting adversity and one’s own power and determination overcoming weaknesses.
Her search for her own identity is elaborated upon further in later works of hers as well, chief among them being her novel, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. It is a tale of a black homosexual woman uncovering her own identity in an oppressive and hateful American society. This is, in essence, a tale of survival.
Lorde labels this tale as a “biomythography”; essentially, a fabricated or fictional life record. This official definition notwithstanding, I additionally believe that Lorde was also going over how she viewed the way in which she was brought up in her youth. Until she became truly independent and separated herself from her parents, Lorde mainly lived a life of seclusion. The loneliness and isolation that she lived in heavily effected her views of herself and others. Her sheltered life led to believe, know and trust in solely what she was told by her parents and this was not to regard whites as being trustworthy. She never understood the reason for this, and this was what perplexed her so greatly. Due to this life of solitude, she went into the wider world without properly knowing herself. She spent her younger years dealing with a fabricated existence that she created with her own mind until she personally discovered the truth.
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Being, in part, a tale of her life, it is necessary to examine her early years. Her parents originated from the West Indies, later relocating to the USA. Her mother’s skin colour was of a shade light enough for her to be seen as a white woman, whereas she and her father were darker by comparison, and her two sisters struck a strange sort of equilibrium. This stark difference engendered uncertainty in Lorde’s mind, since her mother’s skin tone was the colour deemed untrustworthy. Her parents dictated to her how to emote and act in certain situations, but never explained why that was. They believed that dodging the issue was the most effective method in battling prejudice and discrimination, since if it was nameless, it would not exist. This was of the utmost importance to her mother. She was also a significant factor in her childhood and later years since from her youth , Lorde viewed her mother as an image of strength and power. She was aware that her mother was set apart from others like her and often she felt as though this difference made people less fond of her. But for the most part, she explained this difference as:
“…like the season or a cold day or a steamy night in June. It just was, with no explanation or evocation necessary.” (Lorde, p. 16)[3]
Lorde was aware that others relied on her mother, but she never knew the reason for that, and this gave Lorde the false idea that her mother possessed much more in the way of authority than what she had in reality. Her mother herself believed this, and troubled herself greatly in order to conceal her powerlessness. This fervent belief added to Lorde’s idea of her mother. Her mother’s outlook on reality was to amend it and if she couldn’t, then she would instead alter how she perceived it. This belief was not only upheld by her mother alone- it extended across the majority of Lorde’s family.
There were multiple occasions when Lorde and her family were targeted and harassed, but when they went to Washington, D.C. as a present in the wake of her graduation as a gift, it was the first time Lorde recognised how deep-seated and how troubling this racism was. They journeyed from there to New York City via train, but when they went for food, they had to remain seated and eat where they sat; they were not permitted to eat in the dining car. Her mother informed her that the food was costly and that it could be poisoned or otherwise tainted, so they would instead consume what they purchased. Lorde knew her mother was likely correct, so she didn’t protest against her reply. As they arrived in D.C., they went to buy ice cream at a local drug store located close to their lodging. They were told that they could buy what they wanted and eat it outside, but not inside. Her parents’ reaction to this was to simply exit without reacting to the remark. This enraged Lorde, as she now understood what was happening, as did her family, but despite this, nobody protested this blatantly discriminatory action. Her family was similarly infuriated, but again, they exercised ignorance and avoidance, hoping it would pass by quietly soon enough. These episodes stayed with Lorde until she began to mature and see things personally.
As Lorde matured, she gradually understood what her ‘blackness’ really meant. In her high school years, she encountered and became acquainted with a unit of white girls who carried a particular label: the “Branded”. Race was a topic they rarely touched on. They preferred to discuss subjects that brought them together against certain “others”. Owing to her mother’s idea of battling racial issues by disregarding them completely, she started adopting a similar outlook. She started to believe that it could be conquered through avoidance. Later, however, Lorde began to ponder over what the matter was. She couldn’t understand why she was never called over to where her white friends lived, while they, in contrast, saw each other frequently. For a while, Lorde never what differences there were between her and her schoolmates as anything related to racial matters; she viewed it as something natural. After she graduated and entered the world beyond scholastic learning, she started to realize that colour was what differentiated her from many of those around her. In Zami, she states:
“I was gay and Black. The latter fact was irrevocable: armor, mantle, and wall.” (p. 180).
Lorde understood what her colour signified and openly confessed to her lesbian preferences, and she discovered colleagues both black and white, in whose presence she felt at ease and comfortable. Even alongside new companions, she attempted to fixate on the similarities and disregard the differences, but, ultimately, she was unable to do so.
She began to comprehend how hard it was at times for those around her to actually see who it was or what it was they were seeing, especially when they had no desire to do so, evidenced again in Zami:
“I told them I had to work out of the city, because I had a fellowship for Negro students. Sol raised his eyebrows in utter amazement, and said, “Oh? I didn’t know you was cullud!”” (p. 183)
Additionally, she learned that togetherness on its own was insufficient, owing to fundamental differences:
“Being women together was not enough. We were different. Being gay-girls was not enough. We were differnt. Being Black together was not enough. We were diffenent. Being Black women together was not enough. We were different. Being Black dykes together was not enough. We were different.” (p. 226).
Each individual possesses their own unique wants and desires, and when Lorde recognized this, she started to understand her actual self. She began to properly “see” herself as a black lesbian instead of seeing herself as being transparent and unwanted. The wider understanding Lorde acquired allowed her to undergo self-acceptance, and, as Zami shows in its title, it allowed her to spell her name in another way.
Audre Lorde’s book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, was a story about a black lesbian searching for herself and a meaning for her existence in the stifling confines of a homophobic American setting. Alongside the exploration of lesbian identity, there were two certain aspects that captured my attention. One was the type of vocabulary Lorde used to weave her tale. Her style is vibrant, colourful and free in nature, and her prose paints a vivid image of the story itself, even when it indulges in simplicity. Through her writing, too, Lorde makes subtle points that accompany the more overt ones- of note, Lorde does not capitalize either “america” or “united states”. Refusing to give these particular words correct grammatical treatment serves as her personal commentary on the state of the USA, making her dislike of it, in that period of time, obvious. What was also salient was the story it told. Lorde told her tale of having to confront the truth of an unrelenting and often cruel world on her own. What Lorde was searching for was acceptance. She wanted to understand that being a black lesbian was not something criminal or frowned upon. She yearned for people to accept her for herself, but when she at last learned that was a fantasy, she, in turn, accepted herself. And once that was accomplished, she was a true survivor.
Generally, through the voices existing and speaking in her pieces, Lorde’s work oppose the traditions and conventions of a society that revolved around racism and homophobia and highlights the pressing need to keep battling against inequality. She makes it a point to highlight and reiterate her lesbianism and embolden her literary and social stances and spaces. In her fiction at large, she formulates a political discourse that underscores the oppression suffered by black lesbians.
By inserting her own personal experiences into her work and underlining the responsibility of calling herself black and lesbian, Lorde brings to the forefront the uniqueness of the predicament of black lesbians in the USA. By understanding that her blackness and her sexual orientation were not disparate and unrelated, she brought together both struggles- and through this, she expresses her racial and sexual identity in her works, boldly and without restraint.
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