Writing in/against the Academy: Contemporary Biomythographies by women of colour

Abstract

Biomythography is a rich literary medium through which women of colour writers can simultaneously express their hopes for the future and anxieties about the injustices of the present. This essay concentrates on Western higher education as a site of oppression for multiply marginalised women of colour, analysing Audre Lorde's biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982) and Jo Hamya's novel Three Rooms (2021) in dialogue with one another to highlight issues of racialisation, class, and identity in mid-twentieth-century United States and modern British society. By learning from Lorde's and Hamya's use of biomythographical narrative, we can resist the academy in generative forms through embracing nuanced, complex representations of the experiences of women of colour in contemporary literature.

Keywords:

• biomythography
• higher education
• women of colour
• racism
• universities
• Black feminisms

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).