Hi all! I hope you are staying safe and healthy. Zami lecture one is ready to go! It’s 36 minutes and covers material up through page 80 (I’ll try and make the next lectures quite a bit shorter). Please let me know if you have any difficulties listening to the audio recording.
Once you have listened to the lecture, please post a comment in response to one of the following discussion questions by 4 pm on Monday, March 30. As always, please make sure to incorporate and analyze a quote from the reading. Comments can be posted directly on this blog post.
I’ll post Zami lecture #2 sometime on Tuesday, April 1 and you will have until 4 pm on Wednesday, April 2 to leave a comment. I also promise that the future weeks won’t be as time-intensive… trying to make up for lost time and ground!
PS… don’t forget to enter the #ENG430 Twitter competition. Extra credit to anyone who posts a picture of their furry friend reading something by Audre Lorde.
Discussion Questions – choose one!
- How would you describe Lorde’s experiences in school — either as a child or in high school?
- What ideas or questions were raised by Lorde’s use of sensual and erotic language (especially in her descriptions of exploring her mother’s body, interacting with her first playmate Toni, or cooking souse with her mother)?
- Leave a comment addressing one of the other themes from the lecture: the politics of silence, powerful men taking advantage of young girls, or Lorde’s increasing racial consciousness.
Skip to content
For me when I was reading this, the sensual/erotic language stood out, but I was not sure why Lorde was narrating in that way. Reading through these scenes a second time, there is a thread I now see running through these scenes. They are all considered explorations for Lorde of her own self. Although each scene shows Lorde exploring external sources, her narration and thoughts are internal and used to discover herself. Lorde is working through and discovering what being a woman is and what it means. Her mother is not an outpouring of information about being a woman, evident in her discussion of Lorde’s menstruation (77). Neither of her older sisters were welcoming to Lorde either. To discover any information about womanhood would have to be discovered on her own (tactile exploration). That need for information is intertwined in a want for intimacy with her mother which can explain the motherly relationship she beings with Toni. What can be considered a more erotic exploration of Toni’s body is also a way of discovering what another ‘female’ looks like. The cooking of souse, especially when she does it on her own, is masturbatory, which is a normal part of sexual development during puberty.
This idea of her development is really evident when Lorde realizes she is almost as tall as her mother. Lorde realizes “with a shock of pleasure and surprise that I was almost as tall as my mother” (80). She has physically developed into a woman without anyone else’s direct influence. She found her own knowledge and her own path towards that womanhood. That shock of surprise that she is almost a full woman, and the pleasure that she did it mostly on her own.
I agree with this, especially with the sensual and erotic thread of her learning about herself though I think that through her mother keeping information from her pushing her to explore more. There is also this suppression that her mother seems to force on her without much explanation “well, go put your business away first.” (77), I think this suppressing of intimate details that all women have that her mother is not telling her about is what really leads her to explore elsewhere because the information isn’t readily available.
Looking back at Lorde’s formative years, her high school experience stands out as the years of “the Branded.” During her years in high school she forms a “sisterhood of rebels” that become a group she can truly share experiences with unlike how she feels at home (81). Hunter high school introduces her to a relationship she lacks at home. Her feelings for the Branded truly stand out as something more than just a group of friends, but as a life force all its own. As Lorde writes, “we learned that not hurting at all was worse than hurting… We became The Branded because we learned to make virtue out of it” (82). Her friends became a source of her survival and a driving force for her to be creative and wild. There is a reoccurring theme in Lorde’s writing about the difference between “living and surviving” but we see clearly in her relationship to her young friends that she was living with them to the fullest extent. As Lorde writes, “suddenly life became an exciting game of how much time I could spend with people I wanted to spend it with” (86). Suddenly Lorde no longer feels like her company is a burden and is inspired to spend as much time as she can with her friends. Overall, it seems her high school years foreshadowed the powerful gathering of women that Lorde would go on to do in the literary world and academia later in life.
Lorde’s experience in school as a child wasn’t that great. The idea of meritocracy is brought up in this part of the book. Meritocracy refers to a system of principles that reward hard work. Although Lorde was a very bright student and ahead of the majority of her peers, she often got reprimanded for things that weren’t necessarily bad. For example, Lorde’s class was asked to write the first letter of their names, but Lorde wrote out every letter in her name. This action led her teacher’s to believe she was a trouble maker and couldn’t follow rules. In reality, Lorde should’ve been praised for such a good accomplishment. Lorde’s experience in high school was a more positive one. Due to her hard home life, Hunter High School was an escape for Lorde. I think Lorde saw high school as a way to expand socially and emotionally. She first discovered her erotic desire during her high school years. Lorde says “It was high school that I came to believe that I was different from my white classmates, not because I was black, but because I was me” (82). This quote shows the way Lorde found herself and her creativity. I believe her being around other young women her own age helped her blossom and expand her mind. Most of her life, Lorde has only been surrounded by her mother and her strict home-life rules. High school was a great growing experience for Lorde.
Hi Kiera I loved your post! As I was reading I also became fascinated when Lorde would talk about her schooling experience. Since I am learning to become a teacher this truly captivates me. Something that caught my attention in this section was the way she talked about Hunter High School. Lorde states “For four years Hunter High School was a lifeline. No matter what it was in reality, I got something there I needed” (82). From reading this quote I got a sense of relief that she felt whenever she was at school. For many children school is a place where they can express themselves in many different ways. Due to Lorde’s upbringing in a very strict household I believe that school was her escape, somewhere where she was open to new experiences and could be her true self.
Hey Keira, I found the way she was treated in school to be quite the focal point of the assigned reading as well. In regard to your first mention of her schooling though, I found the interactions she also had with her fellow classmates to be quite important. As Lorde recollects, ” Although young, I was the biggest child by far in the whole class, a fact that had not escaped the attention of the little boy who sat behind me, and who was already whispering “fatty, fatty!” whenever the teacher’s back was turned” I feel this is an important aspect of her schooling though it does not directly relate to meritocracy, it does reflect another struggle she faced as a child (25). The meritocracy moment I noticed as a problem for Lorde was when they were asked to read in the front of the room and although Lorde was one of the better readers in the class, she could not read numbers and therefore was punished for it just because she was not taught that as of yet. I found this to be an important aspect of her learning and childhood because she focused on it as being one of the reasons she did not join the ‘fairies’ and was forced to be apart of the ‘brownies’ (28). The way the classes were handled seemed to be a problem, there was clear racism in the classroom and the classes were simply taught in the wrong manner, focusing on reprimanding any mistake or perceived mistake. The way this class is run is a problem that I feel leads to having a lot of negative affects on Lorde.
I found Chapter 11 very enlightening. At the beginning on page 71, “Every West Indian woman worth her salt had her own mortar.” (71), brings forth the notion of pride and identity. What I mean is that this quote makes it seem as though if you were West Indian and you didn’t use a mortar then you could be considered less than. It gives off the sense of exile or banishment if a woman of this heritage were to forgo a mortar in her cooking routine. There is a clear line drawn between being true to one’s culture and modernization.
The sensual/erotic nature of her language, I took as her exploring what it means to be a woman. She is at the age where a girl would start to feel things that would be foreign to her. She would probably try masturbation if she had space. She would probably start to feel the longings a woman gets when they see a particularly enticing person that evokes a strong sense of want. All of these emotions and feelings would be running rampant through her system. This plays into her period in that her body was preparing her for womanhood and its joys and curses.
At any time when Lorde feels the mortar and describes it with words such as “shaft”, “thrusting” (71-80) brings to mind her exploring a man’s body. I don’t necessarily think any of it is a metaphor but maybe a replay of some time where she would have had the opportunity to explore a man’s body.
Her mother’s response to her period made me mad. Linda is contradicting herself. Saying not to be ashamed but at the same tie saying be ashamed. It was almost like Linda was confused about whether she should be ashamed or not. The whole act seemed as though two cultural understandings were warring with each other. Linda’s cultural understanding of it being shameful and then a time where culture perhaps was saying it wasn’t shameful. But I also wonder if Linda was confused because it was Lorde having her period. Lorde herself is a contradiction. She tries to conform to her parent’s ways but can’t help but feel she isn’t like them and has her own way of doing things. I mean Lorde grows up to say speak out and not hold your silence. Be free and open about taboo topics.
Audre’s experiences throughout her education, primarily in elementary school, often times had rarely anything to do with her abilities and everything to do with her appearance. As it has been stated in the lecture, ability often has nothing to do with success and the treatment one receives from teachers. As Audre states in her writing, “Then came my first rude awakening about school. Ability had nothing to do with expectation” and her teacher continued to belittle her even though she displayed intense promise and intellectual ability. Further, Audre’s teacher does not even attempt to acknowledge her intelligence, and rather focuses on her “inability” to follow directions, “the teacher told my mother that she did not think that I was ready yet for kindergarten, because I couldn’t follow directions,” even though Audre printed her name perfectly. Simply based on her appearances as a heavy, black girl, Audre received immediate prejudice from her teacher and was not even afforded an opportunity to succeed. Throughout her experience in elementary school Audre continues to face these discriminations as her strong intellect is completely ignored. Evidently, being treated such a way as a child affected her immensely, because even though she worked hard she did not get rewarded and often was even punished. Her experiences assuredly taught her about the prejudices she would face for the rest of her life, and prepared her to work harder to overcome the obstacles of a black woman.
I found this section of reading particularly informative and enjoyable. In this section, Lorde elaborately describes her experiences at school as being dangerous, non-inducive to creativity or individuality, and downright oppressive. I first realized that school was creatively suppressing for Lorde in the part where she is punished for creatively writing her name. Since Lorde does not conform to the assignment, she is publicly humiliated by “miss teacher” as the teacher states, “I see we have a young lady who does not want to do as she is told. (Lorde, 26)”. I’ve had a similar experience in early childhood where I attempted to draw the letters in my name rather than write in standard form. My parents were notified and I too was publicly humiliated in front of the whole class. This is effective in coercing children to conform, seeing as they value the opinions of their peers greater than that of authoritarian figures. Furthermore, the teacher never stopped to think of the damaging effects this may have on her self-esteem or the development of her creativity, which proved to be her most valuable asset later in life.
I absolutely love the connection the theme of silence has to Lorde’s success in later being a warrior figure that speaks her mind. Lorde’s childhood experiences consist of the story situation with her sisters, to Lorde’s environment in which the societal notion is that words are powerful enough to end lives during the time of WW2 theoretically. The theme of silence struck me as one of the most influential forces in her life, for Lorde permanently takes a stand for pushing back as a right she shares with other people. Lorde speaks out to a vast amount of people and highlights the viewpoints that minority groups might not necessarily have access too. As a child, the punishment rooted behind speaking her mind changed her dramatically as an adult to use expression as a powerful tool.
A quote that stood out to me during the family vacation was, “I didn’t want to miss a single thing… ‘I knew it! She can’t keep that miserable tongue in she mouth one minute… And now too besides she wants to steal me story!'” (47). Lorde was experiencing immense joy just from being able to hear the stories her sisters told and by being in their presence. Lorde did not want any details to be missed, but her knowledge, passion, and love for the story, were washed out by her sister. Lorde’s sister took the correction as toxicity towards her creativity and her own product of a story. In Lorde’s adolescence, “Silence was golden… A SLIP OF THE LIP MAY SINK A SHIP!” (54-55). Silence prevented Lorde from being able to share her worth from a young age, but the punishments did not break Lorde, later working on setting her free and motivating her as an adult writer.
I think Lorde’s high school experience wasn’t good. I feel like it wasn’t great for her because that was the time that she realized and understood more that she was different from her classmates. I really liked both Keira and Kelly’s comments because I feel like I was thinking about the same ideas when it came to Lorde’s relationship with her schooling and also with the concept of meritocracy. I really liked the quote that Keira mentioned in her comment which was when Lorde stated, “It was high school that I came to believe that I was different from my white classmates, not because I was black, but because I was me” (82). This is the quote that first came to my mind as well when I was thinking about Lorde’s high school experience especially. This quote stands out to me because it shows that Lorde didn’t feel like she was different because of her race, but because she had different ideas than her classmates did. I liked what Kelly said in her comment about school being her escape since at home her mother was very strict with her. I feel like these relationships she formed with these young women was also an escape for her. Lorde states “I met girls with whom I could share feelings and dreams And ideas without fear. I found it all to tolerate in my feelings and ideas without punishment for insolence, And even if you respected in admired them”(82). At this time in her life, Lorde was starting to form more meaningful friendships with young women which she needed in order to survive in the world. she needed to be heard since she couldn’t speak this openly at home.
Chapter 10 is the most prominent in terms of Audre being able to comprehend how her identity as black has shaped her life. Being that her mother can twist racialized events into coincidences for her children, Lorde has been relatively sheltered from the understanding that she is at a disadvantage. This is depicted in earlier chapters as Lorde believes a lot of people used to spit into the wind when they were actually just spitting on her because she was black. Not always being forced to acknowledge her blackness after being so sheltered, Lorde states her fury at being denied the right to sit and eat at a restaurant as she recalls, “Straight-backed and indignant, one by one, my family and I got down from the counter stools and turned around and marched out of the store, quiet and outraged, as if we had never been Black before” (70). This recollection furthers her closing of Chapter 10 where she states “The waitress was white, and the counter was white, and the ice cream I never ate in Washington, D. C. that summer I left childhood was white, and the white heat and the white pavement and the white stone monuments of my first Washington summer made me sick to my stomach for the whole rest of that trip and it wasn’t much of a graduation present after all” (71). Emphasizing the whiteness of everything encountered on the trip relays blow after blow of racial consciousness that Lorde had stepped into.
The experience Lorde has in school as a child is really interesting to me because it is shocking how the teachers treat her impressive work, but also because I am becoming a teacher myself. When Lorde was in school, she did not receive the best treatment or reward for her efforts in learning. The moment about writing Audre’s name stuck out to me because of how the teacher expresses herself at first, and then the aftermath. When Lorde says she can’t write at first, her teacher reassures her to try and that, “Mother will be so pleased to see that you at least tried” (25). This to me is a teacher pushing her student to try and do the best that she could do and she would be proud. This changed when Audre wrote her entire name and was demanded as being wrong and punished for not listening to directions. As a young child, having two different types of emotion thrown at you is very hard to understand and trust that certain person. Teachers are supposed to be trusted by all of their students, but it is hard, especially for Lorde when she says, “I had no idea at all what this lady wanted from me” (26). This confusion led to other difficulties throughout Lorde’s life because she didn’t know what others expected from her. Her successes are not seen as what they should be because of how she looks. This took a toll on her future growing up as well because she was never given an explanation about why it was always different for her.
I think that overall, Lorde’s experience in school was not the best experience, especially from her numerous stories that highlight how she was further excluded rather than included. I thought it was very interesting how Lorde wrote about the meeting between her mother and her teacher, when Lorde got in trouble for not listening. Due to her upbringing and how Lorde’s parents raised her, Linda does not believe in Lorde’s teacher’s reasoning to be true. I’m not sure if this next part will make sense, but I’m going to try to put it into words as best as I can; when Lorde’s teacher gets upset with Lorde for not listening or doing as she was told, she is essentially complaining about a student not doing something that it is her job to teach them. This can be seen in the quote “she also believed that a large part of the function of school was to make me learn how to do what I was told to do. In her private opinion, if this school could not do that, then it was not much of a school and she was going to find a school that could (28).
The Politics of Silence
Audre Lorde faced the struggle and power dynamic of the politics of silence. Lorde’s parents tried their best to hide the majority of the troubled political crisis the USA was facing during that time period, such as WWII and racism. Another aspect of political silence is her home environment; in many ethnic first generations families, traditional norms are instilled within Americanized children of color. In the Latinx community, there is a saying, “Calladita te ves mas bonita,” meaning “You look pretty when you’re quiet.” This is oppressing women of color rights in regards to freedom of speech. At a young age, we are forced to conform to our parent’s norms, as a way conforming to the motherland’s norms and doing everything a certain way, “Mistakes could mean exposure, maybe even annihilation. In my mother’s house, there was no room in which to make errors, no room to be wrong (58).” Not only was Lorde silenced by her family, but at school growing up. As a child, Lorde realized her father would not come home often during the WWII crisis, “During the war, my father was almost never at home in the evenings, except on the weekends, so punishment, by and large, became much more immediate (57).” A child being able to see drastic changes in their family dynamic exposes the reality of a problem outside of their family that affects other people. Children will start to question why dynamics have changed in their usual daily routines, and they will overhear conversations. This has influenced Audre Lorde to become an outspoken advocate for marginalized groups. She was silenced for too long and was concealed from the truth of many things (racism and politics).
I find Lorde’s early years in education to be nothing of praise for her intelligence or merit, rather a place that her teachers prioritized students following what they ask of them word for word. While these experiences were completely oriented around privilege (in Lorde’s case, lack thereof), based of the character of Lorde that I have picked up on throughout this course I feel she took these early years and used it as fuel to find what she truly needed. A first grader being curious about their eyeglasses is a completely logical action from someone that age, but for her teacher to punish her for it personally feels like it is overstepping the task of Lorde’s parents. I would be damned if my teacher punished me for something like that when my parents would’ve already scolded me. Teachers are supposed to be uplifting and encouraging, not ridiculing and demeaning. Lorde says, “Since I could not see at all to do any work from the blackboard, Sister Mary of PH made me sit in the back of the room on the window seat with a dunce cap on” (30). This idea of a meritocracy that Professor Savonick brought up is truly not the case in this school that Lorde resides in. This dunce hat does nothing but break down the morale of the students and could make them begin to feel closed off towards education. Lorde’s mother literally sent her to class with a note explaining the situation and her teacher took that and completely ignored it to do what she felt appropriate. As terrible as her experiences may have been, I really think being that she was a child and rather impressionable, these hard times built her character from a early stage. I cannot say if they were good or bad times for her, only she can, but I believe she definitely took the hard times and flourished into something greater than her teachers could’ve ever perceived.
One thing that I thought was extremely interesting in Lorde’s experience in life, but school especially was that her mother never even told her what “black” meant. So, when she was running for school president she was expecting to win because she was the smartest in her grade. The difficult part for her was not getting elected but not knowing why she wasn’t elected. She was never taught about how the world she lived in at the time valued white supremacy for the most part. I think that her mother should have taught her that the color of her skin is a beautiful thing and not something to be ashamed of. For Audre to know that she will face difficulties in society with her skin color but that it is a part of her identity and is what makes her beautiful. One quote that emphasizes her confusion is on page 63 when Lorde says “How could this have happened? I was the smartest girl in the class. I had not been elected vice-president. It was as simple as that. But something was escaping me. Something was terribly wrong. It wasn’t fair.”
This shows the huge difference of how she feels in these two very important settings in her life, but the moment Lorde allows herself to speak up to the guidance counselor about what she wants in her home life, this backfires on her relationship with her mother. This causes Lorde to release emotions of anger and frustration about how the situation was handled and how her mother was failing to see what Lorde also needed within her home life that she had received while in school. Lorde also needed to find a healthy balance of acceptance and unity within her home life in order to better her life and help her onto the right path to find herself and transform into the woman she wants to be without the cultural boundaries from her mother’s strict values.
As Lorde gets older, she begins to see school as a sort of safe place for her to grow and flourish, rather than her own home. Throughout Lorde’s teenage years, she begins to show how her and her mother would clash due to their drastically different cultural experiences of growing up in two countries. She felt misunderstood within the setting of her home, so Lorde turns toward her only escape from the strict rules her mother had put on her, which was school. She then goes on to express she “got something there [she] needed” because she “was in open battle on every front in [her] life, except school.” For Lorde, she eventually discovered that she gained a better relationship with the school setting, rather than her own home setting, as she openly expressed: “…I met young women my own age, Black and white, who spoke a language I could usually understand and reply within. I met girls with whom I could share feelings and dreams and ideas without fear. I found adults who tolerated my feelings and ideas without punishment for insolence, and even a few who respected and admired them” (82).
Reposting Alice’s comment:
We all remember being children and being taught to refer to our private parts as either our ‘pee-pee’ or our ‘who-ha’. For Audre Lorde, she was taught by her Grenadian mother to refer to her private areas or lower-region of her body as her ‘l’oregiόn’. Lorde reveals that, “The euphemism of body was equally puzzling,or no less colorful” (Lorde, 32). These playful and oftentimes awkward euphemisms demonstrate parents’ embarrassment with talking candidly about these body parts because they are inherently linked to the conversation of sexuality as well as intimacy. Without having that vital conversation, children learn that there is something sinful or lewd about talking about their private parts. Though, “The sensual content of life was masked and cryptic, but attended in well-coded phases” (Lorde, 32). Young Lorde still explored her sexuality with curiosity and wonder. But instead of exploring her own body, she pieced together her understanding of sexuality and intimacy through her attachment with her mother. As a child, Lorde recalls cuddling with her mother’s “liquid-filled water bottle [her mother’s breast], patting and rubbing its firm giving softness… at the same time gently rubbing against my mother’s quiet body. Warm milky smells of morning surround us” (Lorde, 33). The maternal love and attachment we experience as children inherently mold our capacity to experience intimacy.
Lorde’s experiences in school I think are part of what makes her aware of the racism in society that she was sheltered from most of her life. We learn early in Zami that Lorde’s mother hid many things from her in order to protect her from racism, but once Lorde begins school, racism is not something her mother can protect her from anymore. She becomes friends with a group of kids who earn the name as “The Branded” because they were friends with kids of all ethnicities. The term “branded” describes someone as shameful or bad. The students are “branded” as something shameful because they extend friendship based on a person’s personality and character and not on their ethnicity. Lorde also is confronted with racism when John J. Brady, the head of her school, tells her mother, “he had never expected to have to take Colored kids into his school”(60). With all the oppressions, segregation, and racism she faced, she still was one of the most intelligent students at her school. Even though everyone was doubting Lorde and giving her obstacle after obstacle, she still was successful and disregarded those around her. These experiences helped to make her into the person she grew up to be, the strong, unapologetic, and powerful woman she was.