Both Gates and Lorde emphasize the relationship between the trickster and language. Lorde specifically points out the trickster's multivocality and ability to act as translator. She also highlights the trickster's associations with unpredictability, abundant eroticism, and gender ambiguity. Reading the traces of the trickster in Lorde's work can lead to productive interpretations of the way she constructs both text and identity within the text. The two are intertwined; commenting on references to Afro-Caribbean mythical figures such as Afrekete and MawuLisa in Lorde's poetry and prose, AnnLouise Keating writes that Lorde '...establishes her linguistic authority by identifying herself with [the] black goddess...' (28). With this move, Lorde reverses the dominant values of a society which, she comments in Zami, 'defined us as doubly nothing because we were Black and because we were Woman...' (225).
Kara Provost, “Becoming Afrekete: The Trickster in the Work of Audre Lorde”
