“My Tongue Softens On That Other Name”: Poetry, People, and Plants in Sarah Bartmann’s Natural World

Abstract

In order to be safe, I think I had best give what I am doing its own name. Let me, like Audre Lorde did in Zami, call this a biomythography. Like Lorde, I am doing it for the same purpose. I wish to uncover from racist patriarchal myths a story of wholeness:

Woman forever. My body a living representation of other life older longer wiser. The mountains and valleys, trees, rocks. Sand and flowers and water and stone. Made in earth. (Lorde 1982, xvi)

Let us go through it the way we feel comfortable

Let us deal with our pain the way we ought to

According to us…

(Primrose 2003, 44–45)