"Hanging Fire"

"Hanging Fire" by Audre Lorde

"Hanging Fire" was written by Audre Lorde in 1978. Audre Lorde was born in 1934 to Caribbean immigrants. She was a Caribbean-American writer whose works focus on civil rights issues and feminism. "Hanging Fire" is a poem that focuses on the struggles of life as a teenager. The speaker of this poem is a fourteen year old girl. She talks about the struggles of being a teenager through first hand experience. She is worried about all the typical things teenagers worry about, acne, boys, parties, but she is also worried about death. Her concern about dying shows up several times throughout the poem. In line 8 she says, "what if I die", in line 15 "suppose I die before graduation", and in lines 32-33 "will I live long enough to grow up". This fear of death is very prominent throughout the poem and it is abnormal for a teenager to be worried about. The speaker also portrays a feeling of loneliness throughout the poem. At the end of each stanza she says, "and momma's in the bedroom with the door closed". The placement and repetition of this line are significant because in each stanza the speaker talks about everything she is worried about and after she states all of her fears she says this line about her mother which shows that she just wants to talk to her about it. The speaker feels lonely because she has no one to talk about her fears with, not even her own mother.