• Njeng Eric Sipyinyu

This paper titled “Audre Lorde: Myth Harbinger of the Back to Africa Movement” examines Lorde's mythopoetics as she creates self-esteem in the black community as necessary to fight racism. Recognizing that blacks had assumed the polarised dialectics of Western culture, Lorde tries to reconnect them to the lost spiritual cord by suggesting a spiritual back to Africa axis. In this regard, Lorde uses a pantheon of mythological and legendary typologies from the ancient Kingdoms of Dahomey, Ashanti, and Benin to create unity for her people. These typologies can serve as sources of intellectual might and models for ritual and cultural behavior. Lorde sees myth as a dominant and authentic form of ancestral worship more accommodating than the Christian culture of the West. Such potent symbols allow blacks to understand identifiers that contravene Western culture's racist, sexist, heterosexist, and homophobic nature. The mythological pantheon would appeal to blacks because archetypes are innate. Invoking this pantheon and making the black community contemporary with it creates sacrality and puts an end to chaos and profanity. She identifies the void of a spiritual link in the black experience as the root cause of the black lack of selfhood. Slavery and colonization severed black people from their sacred home and only a reconnection with this spiritual past can offer blacks self-esteem. This spiritual reconnection applies equally to all blacks on the continent and in the diaspora. A new religious experience based on their mythological past will create unity among people of African descent.

Audre Lorde, Myth, Harbinger, Back to Africa

"Audre Lorde: Myth Harbinger of the Back to Africa Movement", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.11, Issue 5, page no.e737-e744, May-2024, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2405487.pdf

"Audre Lorde: Myth Harbinger of the Back to Africa Movement", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.11, Issue 5, page no. ppe737-e744, May-2024, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR2405487.pdf