In the poem, “The Woman Thing,” the speaker is Audre Lorde, who also serves as the poem’s composer. Lorde served as a self-described African American lesbian, poet, warrior, and mother. She repeated the multiple identities in her work repeatedly while at the same time developing her poetry in an exemplified self by whom the identity elements appear constantly in the poem. When creating the diverse self, Lorde offered a picture of her lived body experience, which is her work’s source. Audre depicts herself as having struggled in diverse aspects of life while she expressed the challenges faced with clarity and force in a manner that led blacks, women, lesbians, gays, transgender, and bisexual communities to value her voice. Nevertheless, regarding the oppression spheres, which Lorde faced, the subjugation that black women faced mostly due to the inequality directed toward them serves as the most important area in her work. She believed in bringing together individuals from distinct groups with the goal of overcoming the repressions that they experienced (Albany.edu, n.d) . Here, the key interesting thing regarding Lorde revolves around how she expresses the poem with a purpose. She explores and expresses pride, fear, anger, love, sexual and racial oppression, personal survival, and neglect. In this vein, it becomes evident that Lorde served as an individual driven by the urge for raising awareness and instituting change in a society that marginalized the minority groups, particularly the blacks and the LGBT members within the society.
In the poem “The Woman Thing,” Lorde reflects on femininity themes and the relationship that prevails between a mother and a daughter. The voice that she expresses here is the most important element apart from the tone. While Audre illustrates men as out hunting in the snow, they come back home to their wives and children empty handed. In the event of the traditional societies, for instance, men needed to go out in each of food while the women waited at home to prepare the food for their husbands and children. Audre also points to an area whereby the men treated women in the same manner as toys, such as when they would seek amusement from young girls at night after food. Perceiving men as pseudo–savages, Lorde argues that men would shout and exercise injustice toward the women indicating the challenges that women faced during the time (Levine, 2017) . As such, in “The Woman Thing,” Lorde aims at revealing the manner in which the society exercised injustices toward women and the inferior members of the society. Therefore, she endeavors to serve as a voice to the community, especially for the members exposed to different kinds of injustices and inequality.
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Furthermore, Lorde recalls an instance in which her mother taught her concerning the women thing. The relationship that the speaker had with her mother was a tumultuous one. She describes herself as the youngest of her siblings while being the most rebellious. The tone that Lorde utilizes at the poem’s end seems cavalier illustrating what her mother taught her on being a woman, which entails understanding ways of taking care of a man. In the poem, therefore, it becomes evident that Audre Lorde served as an individual devoted to supporting the weaker members of the society through empowering them. She learned the woman thing from her mother who guided her on ways of caring for men (Levine, 2017) . Additionally, since Lorde was among the most rebellious among her other siblings, this might serve as one of the major forces that led her to emerge as a key voice for the society. This is especially when it came to catering for minority groups in the community.
References
Albany.edu. (n.d). Audre Lorde: state poet, 1991-1993. Retrieved from https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/archives/lorde.html
Levine, R. S. (2017). The Norton anthology of American literature: ninth shorter Edition, volume 2. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
