From Creation to Re-creation: Gender Metamorphosis in Audre Lorde’s Zami

Abstract

The problematic of this study is to show how Audre Lorde’s Zami (1982) deconstructs the politics of heterosexuality. It depicts how from a biological created Audre Lorde, the writer re-creates a transformed one (the lesbian) to posit homosexuality as a quest for sexual identity. In this gender metamorphosis, the novelist inspects otherness as essentially evolving from women’s struggle for the recognition of their sexual freedom. Finally, she portrays lesbianism as a forum where women can achieve sexual identity and free themselves from male domination.