19 pages • 38 minutes read
Audre LordeA Litany for Survival
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Liminal Spaces
Liminal spaces—thresholds and boundaries—make up a motif that develops the theme of Living Without Security and Safety. Lorde uses liminality to explore the existence of marginalized people. They exist “at the shoreline” (Line 1), which can be read as both a literal location that alludes to immigration and a figurative location related to the “edges of decision” (Line 2). This imagery conveys how marginalized people are often forced to make impossible decisions. One standing “at the shoreline” (Line 1) cannot choose the ocean or the land; the shoreline is made up of both. Another liminal space is highlighted as “love in doorways” (Line 6). People who are poor and Black are often forced to live more public lives than their rich and white counterparts. Privacy, living mostly behind closed doors, is a privilege. Having to work generally means having to go through the doorways of residences, offices, stores, and other locations, and dealing with the general public. Not having to work (a perk of generational wealth) means a person can often have their basic needs met without entering public spaces.
Time
In exploring Concerns About Legacy and Survival, Lorde explores temporal (time-based) liminal spaces, as well as the motif of time. There are the “hours between dawns” (Line 7), which is between temporal spaces. Lorde also considers “before and after” (Line 9), as well as “a now that can breed / futures” (Lines 10-11). Looking at how, in the present, we can improve the future is a way to describe the concept of legacy, or what is left for the next generation. Furthermore, Lorde explores the time of infancy to the time of death. Infancy is a time when children drink their “mother’s milk” (Line 18). This is when marginalized people begin to fear for their lives. This fear lasts until their “death” (Line 14). After one’s death, all that remains is their legacy. Lorde paints a tapestry of time concerns in the poem, exploring how marginalized people must survive the conditions of the present to ensure having a future and legacy.
Food
Lorde uses food both literally and symbolically in “A Litany for Survival.” She describes the issue of food insecurity among marginalized people: “[W]hen our stomachs are empty we are afraid / we may never eat again” (Lines 31-32). Marginalized people fear going hungry and have limited access to nutritious food. As such they also fear that full stomachs will lead to “indigestion” (Line 30), as a result of eating the heavily processed and unhealthy foods that are often cheaper than fresh produce. Furthermore, if someone has been malnourished and they eat too much, it can harm and even kill them, a condition called refeeding syndrome.
Symbolically, Lorde references “mother’s milk” (Line 18) to refer to the time of infancy. Lorde also talks about “bread in our children’s mouths” (Line 12) to mean that they do not experience food insecurity and can have “dreams” (Line 13) beyond never going hungry again. This alludes to the famous labor slogan about bread and roses, which refers to how people of all socioeconomic classes deserve not only sustenance (bread) but also joy and beauty (dreams and roses).
Related Titles
By Audre Lorde
