“ I lie beside my sisters in the darkness, who pass me in the street unacknowledged and unadmitted. How much of this is the pretense of self-rejection that became an immovable protective mask, how much the programmed hate that we were fed to keep ourselves a part, apart?” (Lorde, 58).

It seems that the most obvious revelation within this passage would be the seemingly accepted, as Audre would put, woman-oriented womanhood. That is to say, this statement is most discernibly about what one may modernly refer to as closeted lesbian women. However, to assume that these women would identify as such is brought into question in this passage. The narrator not only hints at the somewhat secret relationships, she points to a complete negation of their existence. It could be said that the moments moving between lying side by side and passing unacknowledged is done via the protective mask that became self-rejection. Although the narrator states that this mask is the pretense of self-rejection with hints of self-administered, programmed hate, it would seem that because of the autonomous nature of all these things, the pretense is invalidated at its onset. The mask was constructed out of the lie of self-rejection which then became all too necessary and is this passage it is questioned whether this make-believe self-hate is actually the wolf in sheep’s clothing. In other words, the narrator questions how much truth is bound up in this act that became a means of survival.

Yet, this context of this passage calls the identity of the “sisters” into question. Although, it has been read above as a moment of lesbo-eroticism, the passage would have an entirely different connotation if the sisters were indeed the narrators biological sisters. Then the trajectory of lying beside one another in darkness to passing unacknowledged would be a bit muddled. There would no longer be a question of hidden sexuality rather there would be a moment of self-hate shrouded in racism and colorism. The darkness would then become two-fold: darkness of skin color and darkness in terms of visibility. Given that the narrator repeatedly stated her literal sleeping arrangements as always separate from her sisters than the possibility of the literal lying beside could be negated. The unadmitted unacknowledgement would then be cast as a self-inflicted dissociation and dissolution of the family. Moreover, it could be each sisters’ dissolution of themselves in that they are refusing to admit their darkness exists in the act of ignoring the narrator. Thus, the question of pretense becomes one that points to the fact that these three girls attended a predominantly white school and the act of hating their own skin became a tactic of self-preservation. Additionally, the programmed hate would then be referencing the systematic ways that blacks were casted as inferior and base/benal non-human entities. The narrator points out the ways in which blacks were taught to hate themselves and everyone who looked like them which leaves the narrator questioning to what extent is this negation done out of necessity and what part is done subconsciously. The passage speaks to the need to segregate oneself from the race as one that begins as just pretend-make-believe that becomes mastered and the mask becomes fixed. It is immovable because to do so would no longer be a removal of a covering, it would be the removal of one’s skin. In both readings of this passage it could be said that now there would be no clothing for the wolf to remove; the wolf has become the sheep.