Hanging Fire By Audre Lorde: Poem Analysis

Audre Lorde’s poem “Hanging Fire,” is view of the world from an adolescent perspective. The author of this poem, Audre Lorde was the daughter of immigrants from West Indies; as a result, she felt like a stranger in her school: a “black girl in white school” (Blackbird). Lorde had very low self esteem which further on lead to insecurities in her adolescence (Blackbird). In the poem the fourteen year old speaker is confronting several issues in the extended world that affect teenagers. The speaker is directly addressing the audience, making them aware of her feelings of personal inadequacy; when she jumps from being worried about her physical appearance to something as serious as death in an instantaneous moment. The title “Hanging Fire,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, refers to the “delay in the explosion of the charge of a gun.” The title justifies the character of the speaker as she is uncertain and lingers on about what to pay attention to and what not to. The narrator of the poem is a neglected teenager who is going through the

Since Audre was from an immigrant family, the poem might reflect the insecurities that she had during her teenage years and how she perceived the world. She felt like an outsider according to her autobiography, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, where she voices a “black girl in white schools with very poor vision, causing her to be clumsy, and a self-image as fat and ugly” (Blackbird). The feeling of disconnectedness and alienation is evident throughout the poem which led to her impaired relationships and a neurotic attitude towards her adolescent life. The discrimination on the basis of race and gender and peer pressure are implied through the poem, which might be the reason of her negative behaviour and thoughts. The poem resonates with Audre’s real life perceptions and