"Zami"

Paper Summary:

Audre Lorde's 1982 book "Zami: A New Spelling of My Name" was called a "biomythography" by the author. The paper reviews this cross between a novel and a memoir based on Lorde's rendition of her growing up in Harlem, the daughter of West Indian immigrants and her coming of age as a Black, as a radical and as a lesbian in the 1950s. The paper discusses the themes of self-determination and survival and the women who shaped the author's life.

From the Paper:

"One of the book's more fascinating descriptions is how Lorde's family dealt with their Black identity in what was virtually a white America. Until the age of 10, Lorde did not understand that she was not white, that she had a different skin color. Her parents had consciously decided to keep racism as far away from her as they could. Her family believed that the best way they could protect their children from racism was to pretend that it did not exist. To Lorde's parents, American racism was a new reality, one that they did not have to deal with in the West Indies."

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