Blacklight Audre Lourde, Zami

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

by Audre Lorde

Reviewed by Suzanna J. Sturgis

Of her friends among the "gaygirls" of New York City in the 1950s, Audre Lorde writes, "Many of us wound up dead or demented, and many of us were distorted by the many fronts we had to fight upon. But when we survived, we grew up strong." Audre Lorde, the third daughter of Grenadaborn parents, grew up not strong but Black, Lesbian, feminist, poet and co-founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. "Zami" is a survivor's "biomythography" and more: it is an eloquent and beautiful telling of the lives of women, Gay and straight, Black and White, who died, or were broken, or grew closed. "Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey."

Lorde herself is a flaming torch, a guide who makes events unfold for the reader as they did for her. "Zami" is a book of joy, grief, poignance, rage, love, bewilderment, and great humor. A book of power and inspiration. A book to go back to.

"Pain was always right around the corner," Lorde writes. "Difference had taught me that, out of the mouth of my mother. And knowing that, I fancied myself on guard, safe. I still had to learn that knowing was not enough. "

Difference for Audre Lorde is not something to fear or deny or merely accept: it is a source of strength, a challenge, something to celebrate. I love these women struggling to deal with potentially explosive differences that often were not even named, to create sisterhoods for which they had no patterns.

"Every woman I have ever loved, has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me, so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins. Another meeting."

"Zami" has been like that for me, a touching of lives, something to make me stretch and grow, move on ... and come back.