Odd Rhodes's Study Of The Difference

Audre Lorde(1934-1992),who defines herself as "Black,feminist,lesbian,mother,poet warrior,"holds one of these identities and all of them as well.She has an indisputable status as the standard-bearer of Black Feminist Movement and one of the outstanding black feminist theorists,but she always believes that she is a poet in the first place.As an African-Caribbean lesbian poet in contemporary American poetic world,however,Lorde is illustrious but also invisible at the same time.She has been the 1st black lesbian poet who signed and published collections of poems with mainstream publishers,and was honored as Poet Laureate of New York State in 1991.Even so,her poetic works are always at the edge of the American poetry study.Tough as a witness and advocator of the Black Arts Movement,she is rarely mentioned in this historical context of African-American poetry study.Most studies on Lorde in China’s academia focus on her feminist thoughts,and in a macro perspective that is scattered in other major studies.In the community where there is radicalism,sexism,homophobia and even bias in literature,Lorde undoubtedly becomes a victim and opposite of all the above.Every community she belongs to just embraces parts of her identity because of the differences,and none of them embraces herself as a whole.Therefore,she celebrates difference in her ideology and praises it as a distinctive means and a permanent theme in her poetry.Thus difference is a cause and effect in Lorde’s lives,and a means and theme in her poetry.The research on Lorde’s notion of difference in her poetry is to decode those differences in her poems,through which this lesbian poet from ethnic minorities appealed and struggled.We can hardly get a strong sense of black aesthetics in her poems,which is just on the contrary of the traditional Western aesthetics.And the expected radicalness and agressiveness as what we get in reading contemporary black poems are vanished in her lines.Her redefinition for difference itself is undoubtedly a contribution for the construction of Black Feminist critical discourse,bringing about a systematic analysis and interpretation on the core proposition for the Black Feminists.Audre Lorde is the 1st feminist who added consideration of sexual orientation in intersectionality,and points out the fact that there is heterosexism exists in the Black community where all sorts of discriminations co-exist as it does in the White community.As a representative from multiple oppressions in race,gender,class and sexual orientation,Lorde the warrior poet refutes and subverts each distortion and misnaming of difference in mainstream discourse.Besides,the ones she concerns about are not limited in one nation and one country,but in the whole world.She shall never join to any community only in parts,but would like to exploit and expand a larger community for the "outsiders",where she could come out Blackened and whole.This thesis is divided into four chapters except for the introduction and the conclusion.Specific research contents and methods for each chapter are as follows.In Chapter 1 we will summarize and interpret the related contents in Alexis De Veaux’s Warrior Poet:A Biography of Audre Lorde and Audre Lorde’s Zami:A New Spelling of My Name,analyzing social and historical background and the origins of Lorde’s thoughts from perspectives of her family,trauma,and identities with the method of historical research in order to demonstrate the inner links between her personal experiences and the formation for her notion of difference.In Chapter 2 we will interpret and elucidate the core of Lorde’s notion of difference and its specific performances according to five of her essays in Sister Outsider,hoping to draw on a reference for poetry analysis in the following chapter.In Chapter 3 we will adopt the method of close reading to analyze Lorde’s notion of difference in her poems from two related perspectives:body&identity and difference&community,within which difference itself is both as the means and the theme in her poems.These two perspectives are permanently side-by-side themes in Lorde’s poetry and the two connections of great importance in her eyes that would draw forth the connections between parts and whole.In Chapter 4 we will explain and summarize personal reasons and realistic significance in writing on her notion of difference from three levels:"oneself","ourselves",and "homeland".And it will come to a conclusion:Audre Lorde realizes her ultimate dream that from "oneself ’ to "ourselves" through writing in her notion of difference.Therefore,her literature road is a process from personal to political and from one being to the whole humanity.The research on Audre Lorde’s notion of difference and her poetry aims not only to highlight her literary status and poetic views as an African-Caribbean lesbian poet,but to present a crucial relationship between parts and whole.Only through a deep understanding of connections between oneself(human body)and the community(the universe)shall the human beings care about all the other beings in this world,and their mutual homeland as well.Only in this way could they aware of their actual humble position on earth,rather than standing at the top of the food chain in their arrogant manners.That is what Audre Lorde concerns and warns about all her lives.