Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - Softcover

Lorde, Audre

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0907179266 ISBN 13: 9780907179269

Publisher: Sheba Feminist Press, 1984

Synopsis

If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.

A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. On she stumbles through teenage hardships -- suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone -- until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. This is Audre Lorde's story. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power.

About this title

Review:

I came across Audre Lorde's Zami, and I cried to think how lucky I was to have found her. She was an inspiration. At last I felt I fitted in. (Jackie Kay)

Excellent and evocative... personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness shine through the writing. Her experiences are painted with exquisite imagery (The New York Times)

Zami is important because of its descriptions of growing up a black lesbian feminist in the 1950s, with open, unapologetic, vivid descriptions of women's relationships (Guardian)

Her work is so quotable. It has the zeitgeist factor. Now, just as much as ever, we need the voice of Audre Lorde (New Statesman)

I have an Audre Lorde google alert on my phone. It helps confirm how relevant my favorite black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet remains today (Huffington Post)

Audre Lorde says it best (Refinery29)

Lorde's examination of her multiple outsiderness pried my sheltered mind wide open (Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home (in ‘My Ten Favorite Books,’ New York Times Magazine))

Zami is just the best (Vice)

Zami made me realise that I was not alone ... that I, too, could be as courageous and as loud with my truths (Elle Magazine)

Zami feels larger than life - almost legendary - while remaining grounded, intimate and moving (Cosmopolitan)

From the Back Cover:

“Zami. Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers.”

In this classic autobiography Audre Lorde combines elements of history, biography and myth to tell her own story. A young black girl grows up in thirties Harlem, a teenager lives through Pearl Harbour, a young woman experiences McCarthyism in fifties Greenwich Village. In and out of this lyrical chronicle move the women – mothers, lovers, friends – who are zami: ‘Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon on me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me – so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognise her.”

“Lorde is a convincing, powerful writer. Her prose speaks directly to the heart of racism, self-acceptance, mother- and womanhood”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Listen to this rich and raging voice”
ADRIENNE RICH

About this edition

• Publisher: Sheba Feminist Press
• Publication date: 1984
• ISBN 10: 0907179266
• ISBN 13: 9780907179269
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264