audre lord hanging fire
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Audre Lord: "Hanging Fire"
I read this poem and understood the emotions immediately. This is a poem of an adolescent's anguish, fear and confusion.
I believe "I am fourteen", to be the most crucial fact of the poem as it is given first. The reader is directed to enter the mind-set of early adolescence, the time where one begins to feel a sense of self; an identity that we lacked before.
Although the narrator talks about "I", I believe she is not a fourteen year old her self, this is just a persona who's view point she writes from. She touches on most of the dramas of growing up. "My skin has betrayed me" refers to possible acne yet also to the colour of her skin, which I believe to be African-American, as she refers to her knees being "ashy", therefore causing her to feel alienated because of her race. "Why do I have to wear braces" Gives us a clue that she is the object of jokes and taunts. She uses the word "betrayed" which I feel embodies the general feeling of a teenager being let down by her body, by her emotions, her mother and the people who were in charge of who got on the math team! It goes along with her feelings of being alone and nobody listening to her side of things...