manifestations of lorde’s erotic within Nappy Edges

“the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that the sensation is enough” (Lorde, 54)

“When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, or history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives”(Lorde, 55).

“Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluation those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives” (Lorde, 57)

What makes Audre Lorde’s text, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” such a compelling text for me every time I read it, is her capacity to isolate the concept of “the erotic” found within all of us and clearly break down its power and its uses. Every time I read this text, I can single handedly point out manifestations of the erotic within my life, and ways that my surroundings confuse the erotic for what she refers to as “the pornographic” (Lorde, 54) and perpetuates it daily. 

In my reading selections of Shange’s Nappy Edges, her acute knowledge and acceptance of the erotic within her work shines throughout the piece. A collection of poetry and prose poetry, I find Shange in assessing and communicating the erotic often makes a cleverly biting attack to that which doesn’t serve us—the pornographic. Specifically looking at the poem, “wow… yr just like a man!”, Shange chronicles the experiences of a female poet in a male dominated poetry space, who was initially revered by male poets because of her abstraction from “female” things in her work, until one day she exclaims, “i’ve decided to wear my ovaries on my sleeve/ raise my poems on my milk/ & count my days by the flow of my mensis” (Shange, 16). What makes this moment such a wonderful example of a woman leaning into the erotic is not really rooted in its clearly feminine references, it’s instead to me in her choice of looking within herself and rooting her medium of expression within what moves her. That is powerful. And it is just that practice in speaking to what moves her, that Shange employs within all of her works but particularly Nappy Edges. For some reason, I felt the most connected to Shange as a young woman within this reading of her selections. I saw and felt her throughout all of her poems, and I feel that connection is rooted in her level of comfort with expressing the erotic in her poems. 

What I find most wonderful about the connection between Lorde and Shange’s understanding of “the erotic” is their shared experience and understanding of the intimate nature poetry and the erotic. Lorde finds little difference between “writing a good poem and moving into the sunlight against the body of a woman [she] loves” (58), and Shange believes that “a poem shd fill you up with something…a poem shd happen to you like cold water or a kiss” (24). It is in that understanding of the erotic that makes their work so poignant and timeless.