The Moldy Avocado: Shame, Failure, and the Future in Mary Dorcey's "Daughter"

Abstract

Why are the private lives of lesbian poets read for their universality rather than celebrated for their difference? A universal reading of the private movements of lesbianism from the sexual to contemplating conception, reinforces the social othering of lesbianism as a deviance, a moral flaw in character. Universalist readings interrupt anti-normative poetic responses. Criticism surrounding Mary Dorcey's poetry, particularly in the 1990s, is an example of this partiality to universalize the lesbian experience. A key to undoing universalizing readings of lesbian poets like Dorcey and to undoing false universalism generally is to establish an emphasis on queer futurity and a refusal of heteronormative futurity. Dorcey's heteronormative universal future is made in the early 1990s at the price of her past, her body, and her lesbianism being erased. Dorcey's poetry displays the possibility of alternative queer futures that require a different way of being, thinking, and writing.