"We Cannot Live Without Our Lives”: Biomythography as Genre, Tradition and Movement in the U.S. (1978 – 1998)

Abstract

In this thesis I focus on seven key biomythographical working class, lesbian writers from the late twentieth century (Gloria Anzalduìa, Dorothy Allison, Leslie Feinberg, Frankie Hucklenbroich, Audre Lorde, Joan Nestle and Pat Parker). I build and put forward a case that what Audre Lorde termed ‘Biomythography’ in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) is in fact the naming and continuation of a Black, minoritised, working-class, lesbian feminist-led literary genre, tradition, and movement. In their struggle for voice and representation, the authors working in this vein unapologetically expounded, mythologised, and contradicted the auto/biographical in their work in order to create sites of resistance as well as socio-political literary spaces, reclaiming and re-envisioning a plurality of existences and experiences. My thesis poses and investigates the development of biomythography, in particular within the era 1978-1998, examining its themes, variations, aesthetics, and impact on our literary and theoretical understanding.