Audre Lorde as a Lover

After this week's discussion on Lorde and the importance of identity, I found an identifier that we neglected, but based on Zami as well as Lorde's poetry, it's clear that being a lover is essential to her self-perception.

Through the sexualization of several key figures in her life, Lorde expresses her fondness for that individual as well as a sometimes fictionalized version of those relationships. From a psychoanalytic perspective, those fictionalized and sexualized scenes could mean a number things, but primarily, it leads one to interpret a desire for intimacy with that individual.

No matter the motivation, it's clear that Lorde uses sex as a means of communication. On page 78 of Zami, Lorde describes an incestuous fantasy, stating:

Years afterward when I was grown, whenever I thought about the way I smelled that day, I would have a fantasy of my mother, her hands wiped dry from the washing, and her apron untied and laid neatly away, looking down upon me lying on the touch, and then slowly, thoroughly, our touching and caressing each other’s most secret places.

In what she coins a "biomythography," sex is used several times to develop the myth that is her story. It's certainly a theme that would be interesting to explore further. Several authors that were close friends such as Adrienne Rich have a similar interest in initially, the empowerment of women as a sexual being and subsequently, the use of that power as a means of communication.