Poetry Criticism | Lorde, Audre - AnnLouise Keating (essay date 1993)

AnnLouise Keating (essay date 1993)

SOURCE: "Myth Smashers, Myth Makers: (Re)Visionary Techniques in the Works of Paula Gunn Allen, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde," in Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 26, Nos. 2-3, 1993, pp. 73-95.

[In the folowing excerpt, Keating argues that Lorde incorporates elements of African myths into her poetry and, in doing so, "reclaims a tradition which has been almost entirely erased by western culture."]

For Audre Lorde …, writing, "making soul," and building culture are intimately related. By fully integrating her personal experience as a black lesbian feminist with her public role as a writer, she demonstrates her conviction that self-discovery, art, and social protest are inseparable. As she explains in an interview with Claudia Tate [in Black Women Writers at Work, 1983], she believes that societal change begins within the individual: "our real power [her emphasis] comes from the...

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