Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name as a Feminist Bildungsroman
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25007/ajnu.v11n4a997Abstract
In accordance with the increasing confirmation within feminist literary and cultural studies on women’s literature and the rumination of its social function to provide a sympathetic as well as a critical analysis of contemporary feminist fiction, this paper explores the attempt of women writers to reconfigure and reformulate established fictional genres to create more responsive genres that better represent the heterogeneity of women’s experiences. Focusing on the way Audre Lorde incorporates individual and collective memories as well as erotic and traumatic memories in her literary works, I use the literary category of feminist Bildungsroman to examine her biomythography, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name in which she presents an alternative model of female development. The paper traces the strenuous personal development and transformation of Audre as a black woman endeavouring to challenge marginalization and resist the various forms and layers of abuse and subjugation practiced against her in a racist and sexist society. Taking into consideration that the political implications of women’s writing can only be theorized when it is related to the cultural and ideological processes that shape it, I employ Rita Felski’s analysis of women’s modern writing as a area where female political identities and collective consciousness are treated and depicted.
In accordance with the increasing confirmation within feminist literary and cultural studies on women’s literature and the rumination of its social function to provide a sympathetic as well as a critical analysis of contemporary feminist fiction, this paper explores the attempt of women writers to reconfigure and reformulate established fictional genres to create more responsive genres that better represent the heterogeneity of women’s experiences. Focusing on the way Audre Lorde incorporates individual and collective memories as well as erotic and traumatic memories in her literary works, I use the literary category of feminist Bildungsroman to examine her biomythography, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name in which she presents an alternative model of female development. The paper traces the strenuous personal development and transformation of Audre as a black woman endeavouring to challenge marginalization and resist the various forms and layers of abuse and subjugation practiced against her in a racist and sexist society. Taking into consideration that the political implications of women’s writing can only be theorized when it is related to the cultural and ideological processes that shape it, I employ Rita Felski’s analysis of women’s modern writing as a area where female political identities and collective consciousness are treated and depicted.
Downloads
References
Boes, Tobias. Formative Fictions: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman. New York, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012.
Bolaki, Stella. New Living the Old in a New Way: Home and Queer Migrations in Audre Lorde's Zami. Textual Practice, 25(4): 779-798 (2013).
Bolaki, Stella. Unsettling the Bildungsroman: Reading Contemporary Ethnic American Women’s Fiction. New York, NY: Amsterda-New York, 2011.
Cha, Heejung. The Transcultural Bildungsroman by Contemporary Women Writers of Color. PhD Thesis. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, 2006.
Felski, Rita. Beyond Feminist Aesthetic: Feminist Literature and Social Change. London: Hutchinson, 1989.
Jay, Karla. Speaking the unspeakable: Poet Audre Lorde. In J. W. Hall. (Eds.), Conversations with Audre Lorde. Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.
Jameson, Fredrick. Third-World Literature in the Age of Multi-National Capitalism. Social Text 15, 65-88, (1986).
Kemp, Yakini B. Writing power: identity complexities and the exotic erotic in Audre Lorde's writing. Studies in Literary Imagination, Literature Resource Center, 37(3): 21 (2004).
Kester, Gunilla Theande. Writing the Subject: Bildung and the African American Text. New York. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1997.
Landry, Donna, Maclean, Gerald. Materialist Feminisms. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.
Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. New York, NY: Crossing Press, 1982.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. New York, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984.
Patterson, Robert. J. African American Feminist Theories and Literary Criticism. In A. Mitchell and D.
K. Taylor (eds) The Cambridge Companion to African American Women’s Literature (81-106). London: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Russell, Susan. Render Me My Song: African American Women Writers from Slavery to Present. New York, NY: Pandora Press, 2002.
Tate, Claudia. (Ed.): Interview with Audre Lorde: Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1988.
Turpin, Cherie Ann. Narrative, Erotic Power and Black Womanhood in the Works of Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, and Dionne Brand. PhD Thesis. University of Connecticut, Connecticut, 2005.
Wilson, Anna. Persuasive Fictions: Feminist Narrative and Critical Myth. London: Rosemont Publishing, 2001.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Academic Journal of Nawroz University
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors retain copyright
The use of a Creative Commons License enables authors/editors to retain copyright to their work. Publications can be reused and redistributed as long as the original author is correctly attributed.
- Copyright
- The researcher(s), whether a single or joint research paper, must sell and transfer to the publisher (the Academic Journal of Nawroz University) through all the duration of the publication which starts from the date of entering this Agreement into force, the exclusive rights of the research paper/article. These rights include the translation, reuse of papers/articles, transmit or distribute, or use the material or parts(s) contained therein to be published in scientific, academic, technical, professional journals or any other periodicals including any other works derived from them, all over the world, in English and Arabic, whether in print or in electronic edition of such journals and periodicals in all types of media or formats now or that may exist in the future. Rights also include giving license (or granting permission) to a third party to use the materials and any other works derived from them and publish them in such journals and periodicals all over the world. Transfer right under this Agreement includes the right to modify such materials to be used with computer systems and software, or to reproduce or publish it in e-formats and also to incorporate them into retrieval systems.
- Reproduction, reference, transmission, distribution or any other use of the content, or any parts of the subjects included in that content in any manner permitted by this Agreement, must be accompanied by mentioning the source which is (the Academic Journal of Nawroz University) and the publisher in addition to the title of the article, the name of the author (or co-authors), journal’s name, volume or issue, publisher's copyright, and publication year.
- The Academic Journal of Nawroz University reserves all rights to publish research papers/articles issued under a “Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of the paper/article by any means, provided that the original work is correctly cited.
- Reservation of Rights
The researcher(s) preserves all intellectual property rights (except for the one transferred to the publisher under this Agreement).
- Researcher’s guarantee
The researcher(s) hereby guarantees that the content of the paper/article is original. It has been submitted only to the Academic Journal of Nawroz University and has not been previously published by any other party.
In the event that the paper/article is written jointly with other researchers, the researcher guarantees that he/she has informed the other co-authors about the terms of this agreement, as well as obtaining their signature or written permission to sign on their behalf.
The author further guarantees:
- The research paper/article does not contain any defamatory statements or illegal comments.
- The research paper/article does not violate other's rights (including but not limited to copyright, patent, and trademark rights).
This research paper/article does not contain any facts or instructions that could cause damages or harm to others, and publishing it does not lead to disclosure of any confidential information.
