Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography

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I'm totally fascinated by the term Lorde coined, "biomythography" - I read here that she was quoted to have said biomythography "has the elements of biography and history of myth. In other words, it’s fiction built from many sources. This is one way of expanding our vision." The dominant impression I get from this is similar to what I've gotten from Susan Sontag's memoirs: that this is a person whose sheer emotional maturity and awareness would make many people 3-4 times her age feel juvenile. Traveling alone to Mexico when you're barely 20 and ending up in an affair with an expat journalist whose pushing 50? Like...Jesus... What you think you doing coming into this house wailing about election? If I told you once I have told you a hundred times, don’t chase yourself behind these people, haven’t I? What kind of ninny raise up here to think those good-for-nothing white piss-jets would pass over some little jacabat girl to elect you anything?’” Linda, 64-65 Phillip's girlfriend. Lorde and Gennie thought she might be a little crazy, as she always sang a tuneless, violent little song as she swept, but as she grew older and wiser, Lorde revised her opinion: "And now I think the goddess was speaking through Ella also, but Ella was too beaten down and anesthetized by Phillip's brutality to believe in her own mouth" (251). Peter Lesbianism – The book describes the way lesbians lived in New York City, Connecticut and Mexico during the 1950s through 1970s.

Lorde refers to this as a biomythography, which is a combination of biography, myth and history. Lorde says that the word Zami is a Carriacou word (Carriacou is a small island in the Caribbean where Lorde’s mother was born) which means women who work together as friends and lovers. This is, amongst other things, a book about love. It follows Lorde’s formative years and takes us up to around 1960. There is a great deal about racism, being a lesbian in 1950s America, friendship and community and Lorde’s difficult relationship with her mother. Gennie's young, brash, and hard-working mother who took care of Ginger and her four brothers. Frieda Mathews ZAMI however imagines our lives, not those of gods, priestesses or animals, as both magic and epic, expanding the reader’s vision of the past, present, and future… along with my affinity for stories embodying “otherness” in the extreme… [it] enabled me to imagine my fiction within the legacy of US storytelling. The less I tried to fit into the traditional picture (white, American, heterosexual realism), the easier it was to see myself and write the words that would take their place in our culture. (Gomez, “Lesbian Self-Writing: The Embodiment of Experience,” Journal of Lesbian Studies Volume 4, Number 4) A cold and cruel nun who tyrannized over Lorde while she was in Catholic school. Lorde surmised she must have hated children. Louisa This is not an easy read and repays time and careful reading. It is a great book, one that really should be much more widely known, especially here in the UK. Lorde expresses herself very well:It was a choice of pains. That was what living was all about. I clung to that and tried to feel only proud. Lorde, 111 A friend of Gennie's who was a dancer, was "dark and beautiful" (89), and went to the High School of Music and Art. Lorde still spent time with her in the city after they graduated high school and Gennie died. Cora We slipped off the cotton shifts we had worn and moved against each other's damp breasts in the shadow of the roof's chimney, making moon, honor, love... Lorde, 252 Genevieve was not only Lorde’s first real friend, but the first girl she fell in love with. Her death weighs on her conscience—what if she could have saved her? What if she had told her how she felt? What if they had been able to fully experience their love for each other, previously only hinted at by holding hands as they wandered New York City together? Lorde’s memories of her love for Genevieve will shape everyone she falls in love with after. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is a 1982 biomythography by American poet Audre Lorde. It started a new genre that the author calls biomythography, which combines history, biography, and myth. [1] In the text, Lorde writes that "Zami" is "a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers", noting that Carriacou is the Caribbean island from which her mother immigrated. [2] The name proves fitting: Lorde begins Zami writing that she owes her power and strength to the women in her life, and much of the book is devoted to detailed portraits of other women. [2] Plot summary [ edit ]

Toni asked if she could play tomorrow, and Lorde kept that dream in her heart as she went with her mother on her tedious errands. It was an eternity until the next Monday, but Toni never appeared. Being women together was not enough. We were different.–Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My NameAfter Lorde loses her class election for vice-president to Ann Archdeacon, she comes home crying in anger and disbelief. This was one of Lorde’s first experiences with racism. Though she couldn’t control the color of her skin, she worked hard to get the best grades to try and earn her classmates' respect. Instead of electing her vice-president, however, they elected Ann, a conventional white, blonde, blue-eyed beauty. Forgetting that her mother had warned her not to come home upset if she lost, she confides in her, and her mother chastises and slaps her in anger and heartbreak. Lorde’s mother wanted to protect her from experiencing racism as long as she could, and blames both Lorde for not heeding her advice, and the world for not recognizing Lorde’s talents. This is a harsh way to teach a child a lesson, and arguably it didn't work, but it's hard not to see Linda's point. The Rosenbergs had been executed, the transistor radio had been invented, and frontal lobotomy was the standard solution for persistent deviation." Ginger, Audre's colleague from the factory at Stamford; Audre's first female lover. Audre later moved in with Ginger and her Mom, and paid rent for room and board.

Lorde’s sisters went to a Catholic school, which was across the street from a public school that Linda always threatened them with having to attend if they did not do well. When Lorde was five she was legally blind and started going to sight-conservation classes at this public school. Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing." A great deal of Lorde’s writing was committed to articulating her worldview in service of the greater good. She crafted lyrical manifestos. The essay “Poetry Is Not a Luxury” made the case for the importance of poetry, arguing that poetry “is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Lorde examines women using their erotic power to benefit themselves instead of benefiting men. She notes that women are often vilified for their erotic power and treated as inferior. She suggests that we can rethink and reframe this paradigm. This is what is so remarkable about Lorde’s writing—how she encourages women to understand weaknesses as strengths. She writes: “As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all aspects of our lives and our work, and how we move toward and through them.” In this, she offers an expansive definition of the erotic, one that goes well beyond the carnal to encompass a wide range of sensate experiences.

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Lorde wonders why the most far-out position always seems right to her—why extremes are more comfortable than the “unruffled middle” (15). In October 1980, Lorde mentioned on the phone to fellow activist and author Barbara Smith that they “really need to do something about publishing.” That same month, Smith organized a meeting with Lorde and other women who might be interested in starting a publishing company specifically for women writers of color. By late 1981, they’d officially established Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. One area of powerlessness was in regards to racism. Racism was an indelible part of the Lordes’ lives, although Linda and Byron did their best to shield their daughters from this reality. Linda would insist that when white people literally spat on them that “it was something else” (18); it was “so often her approach to the world; to change reality” (18). The girls grew up thinking that “we could have the whole world in the palm of our hands” (18), which ended up being more confusing than anything else. Lorde remembered, as did so many little girls of color, “All our storybooks were about people who were very different from us. They were blonde and white and lived in houses with trees around and had dogs named Spot” (18). At school Lorde’s teachers would often single her out for cruel treatment, with Sister Mary creating two groups of students—the Fairies and the Brownies—and Lorde observed “in this day of heightened sensitivity to racism and color usage, I don’t have to tell you which were the good students and which were the baddies” (27-28).