Zami by Audre Lorde
**Overview of "Zami: A New Spelling of My Name" by Audre Lorde**
"Zami: A New Spelling of My Name" is an autobiographical novel by Audre Lorde that explores the coming-of-age journey of a young Black woman as she navigates her lesbian identity. Set against the backdrop of the 1950s, the narrative follows Zami, who escapes from New York City to Mexico, where she encounters Eudora, an older expatriate woman. This relationship serves as a catalyst for Zami’s sexual and emotional awakening, revealing the complexities of living in a society marked by racism, patriarchy, and repression. Upon returning to Greenwich Village, Zami embarks on a long-term relationship with Muriel, but as she grows intellectually and artistically, their bond challenges her personal development. The book is rich with erotic language, celebrating Zami’s acceptance of her desires and the different stages of womanhood. Throughout her journey, Zami also encounters the mythic figure Afrekete, representing a fuller expression of her erotic self. Ultimately, "Zami" weaves a narrative that challenges traditional myths and offers a new understanding of identity, love, and empowerment within the context of Black lesbian feminism.
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Subject Terms
Zami by Audre Lorde
First published: 1982
The Work
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde’s prose masterpiece, examines a young black woman’s coming to terms with her lesbian sexual orientation. An autobiographical novel, Zami has earned a reputation as much for its compelling writing as for its presentation of a coming-of-age story of a black lesbian feminist intent on claiming her identity.
At the age of nineteen, Zami flees New York City, where she was raised by her West Indian parents, for Mexico. There, she falls in love with an older expatriate woman named Eudora, who opens up her sensual life to the younger woman. Through her relationship with Eudora, Zami realizes the paralyzing consequences of the “racist, patriarchal and anti-erotic society” that Eudora fled when she left the United States. Zami returns to live in the “gay girl” milieu of Greenwich Village in the 1950’s. She commits herself to a long-term relationship with Muriel, a white woman with whom she builds a home. Muriel completes the sexual awakening that Eudora began. Muriel is threatened, however, when Zami enters therapy and enrolls in college. As Zami forges an identity that integrates her sensual, intellectual, and artistic sides, Muriel moves out of the Greenwich Village apartment. Zami moves forward, even in grief, toward her new-found life.
Erotic language and scenes pepper the story. Zami learns to accept her own erotic impulses toward women, and her acceptance leads her into a larger life where love for women is central. Her eroticism is about the acceptance of the stages of a woman’s physical life. Eros is also language that she uses to infuse her poems with life. As Zami goes to college, begins to send out her own poetry, and opens to life while Muriel declines, she meets a female erotic figure of mythic proportions: Afrekete.
Years earlier, Zami met a black gay woman whom she named Kitty: a woman of pretty clothes and dainty style. The two women meet again at the novel’s end. Kitty has become a fully erotic woman, who has assumed the mythic name Afrekete. After her liaison with Afrekete, Zami finds that her own life has become a bendable, pliable entity that challenges myths and, in the end, makes a new myth of its own.
Bibliography
Abod, Jennifer. The Edge of Each Other’s Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde. New York: Women Make Movies, 2002. This documentary video covers a global conference held in Boston in 1990 that used Lorde’s work as a basis for discussions on race, gender, class, and sexuality.
DeVeaux, Alexis. Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. This biography provides facts about Lorde’s life that help readers to see Zami as a mythical reworking of Lorde’s experience. Divided into two parts, one before and one after Lorde’s diagnosis of cancer.
Hall, Joan Wylie, ed. Conversations with Audre Lorde. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. Gathers together dialogues between Lorde and other feminists, lesbians, and poets. Particularly important is the conversation between Lorde and Adrienne Rich.
Kader, Cheryl. “’The Very House of Difference’: Zami, Audre Lorde’s Lesbian-Centered Text.” Journal of Homosexuality 26 (1994): 181-195. Shows how Lorde came to carry her “home” on her back like a snail, refusing to settle down in any “permanent home” of identity.
Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Trumansburg, N.Y.: Crossing Press, 1984. Many of Lorde’s writings in this collection link to themes and moments in Zami. Two such essays are “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” and “Grenada Revisted: An Interim Report.”