Date of Thesis

2017

Description

Throughout her lifetime, Audre Lorde embraced many identities that developed as a result of her multicultural upbringing in New York City. The daughter of immigrants, she was raised with multiple value systems including those of her parents and those of mainstream American society, the combination of which arguably necessitated Lorde's need to proliferate her sense of self as a means of survival. With scholarship on identity in Lorde's biomythography, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, typically examining the ways Lorde attempts to structure her selves throughout her narrative, I draw upon Lacan's three orders of subjectivity to focus instead on Lorde's use of revisionary myth. Specifically, I focus on how it enables Lorde to undermine the phallic symbolic so that she can better express the Truth of her experiences as a Black lesbian and thus give better recognition to the complexity of her selves.

Keywords

Audre Lorde, identity, American literature, sexuality

Access Type

Honors Thesis (Bucknell Access Only)

Degree Type

Bachelor of Arts

Major

English

First Advisor

Glynis Carr

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