Racism Against Black Woman Seen in Audre Lorde’s Three Selected Poems: “Who Said It Was Simple”, “Coal”, and “A Woman Speak”

Abstract

This research tries to dismantle black women struggle in the racism oppression era in United States through Audre Lorde three selected poems. In this research, I take three selected poems of Lorde which who loudly voiced the identity of black women with all their oppression at that time. Audre Lorde explores her thought and conveyed her protest through her poems. Therefore, this research uses Michael Riffaterre’s Semiotics of Poetry theory to find out the meaning and significance of three selected poems by Audre Lorde. This research uses some opinions and history as hypogram to know the racism experienced by black women, that they are treated unfairly and cannot life like other human. The main goals of this research are to discover the significance of Audre Lorde's three selected poems. Therefore, there are two questions which are drawn to achieve the goal. The first to know the presented meaning of the Lorde’s three selected poems and the second is to reveal the significance of Lorde’s three selected poems. The goal of this research is important to achieve so that later it can be contributed to the study of literature and expected to be reference for next researchers. This research is a qualitative, because I do not use numerical or quantitative data that is emphasized in descriptive texts to analyze data and information. Qualitative data are taken from form of words, sentences, and phrases that use in the poem that relate to Audre Lorde’s three selected poems: “Who Said it was Simple”, “Coal”, and “A Woman Speak”. The result of this research explores the struggle of black women that experienced racism in United States at that time. Audre Lorde through his poems tries to voiced her protest about the double burden that black women bear, apart from racism they also get sexism.