Analysis: A Woman Speaks By Audre Lorde

Despite the achievements of women in many different fields, society still attempts to limit women to certain roles. Furthermore, in the poem, women “… are defined […] by what [they] never will be,” (lines 19 - 21); once again, the author claims that women are defined by what they are unable to do because of gender bias. Instead of being given the chance to be influential, they are continually limited to staying at home or doing jobs “meant for women.” Finally, Boland tells the tutor that women “…were never on the scene of crime,” (lines 27 - 28). This serves as a metaphor for how women are never allowed to do important jobs; instead, they are left at the sidelines due to the repeatedly ignored restrictions placed on women by our gender-biased society.

In this book she has helped the reader understand how women help in shifting and creating the world that we know today.

Overall her main group of people that she is hoping her message will get to is the everyday woman of any age who is making her own history on a daily basis. She directly aims her focus to them in her closing when she writes, “ I applaud the fact that so many people -- students, teachers, quilters, nurses, newspaper columnists, old ladies in nursing homes, and mayors of western towns -- think they have the right to make history” (Ulrich 665). The only time she out right refers to women in the statement is “old ladies”, yet her other generalizations are all predominantly female based; the majority of teachers and nurses are women; in the USA, the western states tend to be more liberal so this is where one would expect to find female mayors. She writes this way to give a head nod to women who dare to live within the norm without, making male readers feel excluded. Throughout her writing in this portion, she uses a sincere and admiring tone, which gives the reader a deeper understanding of just how much she truly wants women to make their own history.

“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something” (NP). This is a quote from U.S. Representative John Lewis’ commencement speech that he gave at Washington University in Saint Louis. Lewis was a civil rights leader who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The essay, The Fourth of July, by Audre Lorde is about her trip to Washington D.C., and the racism she experienced. As an 8th-grade graduation present, Audre’s parents took Audre and her sister to Washington D.C. In pre-civil rights America, racism was a powerful force experienced by minorities, limiting their opportunities to advance economically and integrate equally into America’s predominantly white society.

Do you ever feel insecure about your body? You can feel unconfident about yourself because a unforgettable memory in your life.

Smith states her argument topic the humanities are a necessity in people’s life at the beginning by using the work of Audre Lorde. She claims that the vanish of language proves that the skill of critical thinking is degradation through various types of social media (48). By proving this claim, Smith uses the word from Robert Frost as an evidence to prove that people’s minds are easy to be manipulated. Smith mentions that for a long time, in many people’s opinions, the humanities are not making any profit because they see people always have a difficult time to find a decent job after graduating with a major in the humanities. She even uses her own story as a counter- evidence to demonstrate this situation in widely consider (50).

In Audre Lorde’s story, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” she reveals the difficulties that women of color have and are experiencing. Based off of money and profit, she argues how society challenges superiority. Which leads into the classification of “dehumanized inferior(s),” who are considered as “Third World people, working-class people, older people, and women” (Lorde 114). She provides her experience of inferiority by discussing her personal thoughts of inferiority. Lorde thinks that “[I]t is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes” (114). She believes that society should be open-minded in seeing difference. Lorde argues that individuals are ignoring it and they aren't realizing

In our class discussions and reading, I learned that women were once in charge of the human race, women were a part of a community, no race was inferior or superior, there was peace and harmony in the world until the patriarchal era came, planning to embed itself in the ground for a long time. Women were raped of their identity, their race and their status in society. Men ruled the biblical stories, leaving Mary out. Hence, the war started between the races, women fought to gain their identity back and to do so, they started with writing. One of those women was Audre Lorde. Audre Lorde was raised in a very sheltered family. She was protected by her mother who believed that white people should not be trusted. Seeing her mother

Most if not all women have been treated differently because they are not men. While some instances are more dramatic than others it still happens. Even though things of this sort are getting much better it still happens. In Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Curley and all of the guys who work on the farm treat Curley’s wife like she isn’t even a person. By the treatment of Curley’s wife and and the narrator Munro in “Boys and Girls” the writers suggest that women are often mistreated only because of something they can’t even control.

The poem, “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde is a both a confessional and identity poem. She is not only addressing her internal battle and self-suffering, but also discussing the societal inequities African American women were suffering in the United States. The poem’s diction, on the surface, produces a tranquil tone to the poem. This facet of tranquility in the poem is used to express how her battle against inequity will not be fought with violence or hatred, and how she is not blaming any specific party or institution for her personal suffering. She instead plans to use the power and beauty of words to communicate the flaws of the image of women, fight against injustice and racism, and alleviate her internal despair. “A Woman Speaks” by Audre Lorde is an anthem for African American women and uses vivid imagery, ancestral references, and a call to action to connect to the reader and enact a fight against the underrepresentation of African American women.

Audre Lorde was born on February 18, 1934 in New York City to immigrant parents from the West Indies. She learned to talk, read, and write somewhere around the age of four and wrote her first poem in eighth grade, which was then published in Seventeen magazine. In 1962, Lorde married a man named Edward Rollins and had two children before they divorced in 1970. However, in 1968 she moved to Tougaloo, Mississippi and met her long-term partner, Frances Clayton. Her earliest poems were often romantic, but in the 1960s became more politically centered due to the amount of civil unrest combined with confusion over her own sexuality. At the time many of her poems were written, more than one-fifth of the nation lived below the poverty line, and

Women have been working hard to have equal rights, but the first activists of the campaign never had the chance to experience the results. “Women” by Alice Walker, is about how women have been fighting for equal rights and now we finally have them, that is why I decided to analysed this poem. As a feminist this poem appealed to me because it showed the struggles of women's rights.

“They killed my son in cold blood,” lamented Eloise Armstead. Her husband, Add Armstead, was traveling to work with a companion on Saturday evening in the early 1970s. Thomas Shea and Walter Scott, responding to a call about a cabby that was robbed earlier that day, used this opportunity to rid the world of the wicked and gain a victory for the righteous. Walking along New York Blvd. in South Jamaica, Queens, Shea and his partner pulled alongside the two. Armstead says, as he recalls the incident, “We were walking, not saying anything to each other, and this car pulls up, and this white fella opens the door with a gun.” To him and his companion it looked like they were going to be robbed, so they ran. As the gunshots

If scholars are correct in assessing ancient biblical Israel as patriarchal, then the seasoned woman of the Song has mastered the art of “depatriarchalizing” her private world, and thus, in love she comes without the baggage of this world. “She’s undaunted, risking misunderstanding and censure as she pursues love. She is responsible, being accountable for her actions. She is protective, shielding her lover and the love they share from the prying eyes of others.” Though she lives in an imperfect cruel world: angry brothers (1:6), wet winter (2:11), foxes that ruin the vineyard (2:15), anxiety of lover’s absence (3:1-4; 5:6-8; 6:1); brutality of watchman (5:7), reality that other women vie for her man’s attention (6:8)---she triumphs in her love and invites her partner to share love without the burden and temptations of real life. She’s confident and self assured of her beauty and character (1:5; 2:1; 8:10) with a strong sense of security and independence such that she has no hang ups in initiating sex (3:4) nor in sharing her fantasies and desires to her man. She’s shameless: fear of rejection, ridicule, embarrassment, and inadequacy is not in her vocabulary. Moreover, the wild animal

Since Time began, women have always been thought of as unequal to men. Women were thought of as property, owned by their fathers and later, their husbands. Royal women, or women raised in very high respected families were traded into an arranged marriage to keep the peace between the families, Often times, their wealthy husbands were very old and even sometimes abusive. Other times, women who were not in wealthy families were also abused. A poet by the name of Robert Browning wrote two very famous poems. My last Duchess and Porphyria’s Lover. I believe that these two poems are very similar yet very different in many ways.