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Honors D I App;I I'm Every Woman: Audre Lorde's Creation of an Interior Community in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Caralynn Manes as partial flÿlfillment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honors in English College of Arts and Letters Faculty Thesis Director Dr. Iÿimberlyÿck Honors Progr Honors D i App;I The University of Toledo DECEMBER 2017 Abstract Audre Lorde, a young black lesbian growing up in the 1950s, feels as if she is an outsider. In Zarni: A New Spelling of My Name Lorde demonstrates how she does not fit into the white, misogynistic, and heterosexual norms of her times. While there is no physical space for Lorde to be accepted in her fullness as a black lesbian, I wilt argue that Lorde internalizes a collection of women in order to fill the void of accurate models in her life. Lorde pieces together a community of women that does not exist in her tangible world in order to feel a sense of comfort and commonality. By looking at how she connects herself to other black women in Zami, I will examine how she rebuilds these women internally in order to form a personal community of black lesbians. Even though this community of women may not always exist in a tangible space, or may not all form one group outside of Lorde, I propose that her choice to pull all of these women into her own narrative, and therefore, her own identity, allows her to build a makeshift but authentic home for herself through the act of life writing. Though her ability to create a home in herself through the women she encounters does demonstrate some of Lorde's own resilience, I ultimately plan to show the necessity for more spaces for queer people of color, so that their community does not have to be created internally, but can instead be physical, so that they do not have to work twice as hard to find a sense of togetherness and commonality. ii Acknowledgements A warm thanks to the best thesis director I could have asked for, Dr. Kimberly Mack, without whose questions I would have never found a footing on this project. Also, I would like to thank Dr. Melissa Gregory for her guidance throughout this process. In addiction, thanks to Margaret Chappuies and Philip Zaborowski for going through this quest with me. Lastly, I would like to thank my live in editor, Delaney, for long nights of hearing me talk about the black lesbian literary tradition. .°. 222 Table of Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ ii Ackmowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ iv I'm Every Woman: Audre Lorde's Creation of an Interior Community in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name ........................................................................................................... 1 Works Cited ....................................................................................................................... 27 iv I'm Every Woman: Audre Lorde's Creation of an Interior Community in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Already a poet and essayist, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name marks Audre Lorde's first extended work in prose. As a biomythography, it relates the true story of Lorde's life growing up through the 1930's and into the late 1950's. Before Zami was published in 1982, there was a dearth of black lesbian literature. In the time in which the novel takes place, it was near nonexistent. Barbara Smith begins her invaluable work, "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," by writing about the immense lack of criticism of black female work, largely because of the invisibility of black women. However, despite the "near nonexistence of black lesbian literature," Smith commends the "handful of black lesbian women who have risked everything for truth" such as Lorde did with her writing (424). Lorde, while being interviewed by Claudia Tare for her book Black Women Writers at Work, was asked for whom she writes. Lorde answered that she writes for herself, but went on to explain that "When I say myself, I mean not only the Audre who inhabits my body, but all those feisty, incorrigible black women .... I write for these women for whom a voice has not yet existed" (104). Lorde, therefore, creates her book, filling the gap of the black lesbian tradition with her story, quilting it together fi'om her experiences with women throughout the early years of her life. Growing up as the black lesbian child of an immigrant mother, Lorde often feels herself an outside and, in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, she demonstrates how she does not fit into the white, misogynistic, and heterosexual norms of her times. Lorde lacks a home, but rather than allowing herself to continue to see herself as part of an "other," I will argue that Lorde internalizes a collection of women in order to fill the void of black lesbian models in her life. By doing this, she creates a community of women that did not before exist, allowing her to find a sense of comfort and commonality in a world where she had previously seen herself as lacking a true home. By looking at how she connects herself to other black women in Zami, I will examine how she reconstructs these women in order to form a personal community of black lesbians ttn'ough writing. While it would be preferable for Lorde to be able to find this sense of camaraderie in an already accepted collective of women, this option does not exist for her, so she makes do without it. Even though this community of women may not always exist in a tangible space, or may not all form one group outside of Lorde, I propose that her choice to pull all of these women into her own narrative, and therefore, her own identity, allows her to build a makeshift but authentic home for herself. Though her ability to create a home in herself through the women she encounters does demonstrate some of Lorde's own resilience, I ultimately argue for the necessity for more spaces for queer people of color, so that their community does not have to be created internally, but can instead be physical, so that they do not have to work twice as hard to find a sense of togetherness and commonality. Throughout her life, Lorde is lacking in perfect communities to call home. The concept of having a place to call home is very important to her, especially in her younger years while she is beginning to form her identity. The idea of home stands for a place where she can be accepted without needing to change in order to fit into said home's traditions 'and standards. Rather than having a tangible home, Lorde views home as her mother's motherland, saying "Once borne was a far way off, a place I had never been to but knew well out of my mother's mouth" (13). From the very beginning of her life, the concept of home for Lorde is one made out of words rather than bricks and hardwood. While at this point in her life she still sees home as a place, she begins to learn how to carry the sense of the home with her. In the same manner in which her mother builds Carriacou in order to keep inhabiting a place that she cannot return to, Lorde eventually forms her home in the words of Zami. Even more importantly, rather than being a man's world, it was the words of a woman that managed to create this home. For Lorde, her mother's words were magical enough to build a whole world that Lorde wanted to be a part of. This marks the early importance of femininity as a key piece of a place where Lorde can feel included. By finding her first concept of home in the narrative creation of her mother, she views home as a primarily female inhabited place. Even in her actual childhood home in New York, her father was significantly less present than her mother and sisters, filling the concept of home almost exclusively with female figures. However, even as Lorde views this motherland as a home, it remains distant, leaving Lorde as an outsider. She can see a home she wants to be a part of, painted as one where black women can thrive, yet she is unable to be a resident of it. Therefore, Lorde needed to build her own home, using her own words. Using the power of creation that she learned from her mother, Lorde builds her house in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by collecting nan'atives of her interactions with other black women in order to form an intel"nal community. Since she is an outsider in her physical homes, whether because of society or space, she creates one that she can always can'y with her. 4 The concept of Lorde as a person who does not, and refuses to, fit into society's mold is very important to Zami. In reading the text as a "portrait of an artist" novel, Barbara DiBernard explains how Lorde's femininity creates a difference between Lorde's Bil&mgsroman and that of her male counterparts which seem to dominate the gelÿ'e. Whereas most masculine stories take on a story of an "artist-in-exile," Dibernard determines that Lorde is rather an "artist-in-relation" (196). While male, and particularly white male, narratives focus on creating a protagonist that, though they fit many of the standards of their time, is on the outskirts of society, Lorde, who actually is an outsider in her society, does the opposite. Rather than allowing her creativity to grow from her experience as someone disparate to society, Lorde forms her narrative in interactions with other women.
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