Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by justabean_reads
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I seem to have saved Lorde for my mid-thirties, which is a good time to read Lorde, though I wonder what baby lesbian me would have made of her. I feel like my forties and fifties will also be good times to read her.
For the two people who haven't read it (and should now do so immediately), this is a self-mythologised account of coming of age black, gay and the child of immigrants in New York City in the 1940s through 1960s, especially her relationships with the women she loved and her growing understanding of how to discover and take possession of your identity when it's so profoundly at odds with the mainstream of society.
Lorde was a poet first, and includes a lot of poetry written at the time, and it also creeps into the prose, without the book ever being florid or overdone, every sensation and impression of life in Harlem, and the Lower East Side, and Stamford factory working, and Mexico City and the the pre-Stonewall dyke bar scene comes vividly to life. I loved the feeling of Audre growing into herself, especially her increasing maturity and insight in her relationships, first with her mother (who is described both in emotions of the time and with the empathy of retrospect), and then with intense school friendships and eventual sexual and romantic relationships. Lorde doesn't flinch back from her screw ups or her lack of understanding, nor from frank descriptions of a couple real trainwrecks, but everything is seen with an immense compassion for what made people act the way they did. Though there's some tragedy, the story is warm and full of good will.
The book was published in the '80s, and is not largely about the civil rights or black power movements, Lorde's experience as a dark-skinned black woman and as a first generation American is intensely political and runs through the centre of the story. She was involved in a variety of leftist-anti McCartheyist movements, and in the lesbian community, and her race and sexuality very much affected the space she could find in both of those. A lot of the foundations that will become her insights in Sister, Outsider are laid down here, and it was really neat to read them so close together.
For the two people who haven't read it (and should now do so immediately), this is a self-mythologised account of coming of age black, gay and the child of immigrants in New York City in the 1940s through 1960s, especially her relationships with the women she loved and her growing understanding of how to discover and take possession of your identity when it's so profoundly at odds with the mainstream of society.
Lorde was a poet first, and includes a lot of poetry written at the time, and it also creeps into the prose, without the book ever being florid or overdone, every sensation and impression of life in Harlem, and the Lower East Side, and Stamford factory working, and Mexico City and the the pre-Stonewall dyke bar scene comes vividly to life. I loved the feeling of Audre growing into herself, especially her increasing maturity and insight in her relationships, first with her mother (who is described both in emotions of the time and with the empathy of retrospect), and then with intense school friendships and eventual sexual and romantic relationships. Lorde doesn't flinch back from her screw ups or her lack of understanding, nor from frank descriptions of a couple real trainwrecks, but everything is seen with an immense compassion for what made people act the way they did. Though there's some tragedy, the story is warm and full of good will.
The book was published in the '80s, and is not largely about the civil rights or black power movements, Lorde's experience as a dark-skinned black woman and as a first generation American is intensely political and runs through the centre of the story. She was involved in a variety of leftist-anti McCartheyist movements, and in the lesbian community, and her race and sexuality very much affected the space she could find in both of those. A lot of the foundations that will become her insights in Sister, Outsider are laid down here, and it was really neat to read them so close together.