Zami: A New Spelling of my Name
Audre Lorde
The story of ‘Zami’ began with her childhood. The author’s childhood. Began in her childhood. Like all stories, the memories of her childhood came from the collective memories of herself, her mother and her sisters. Of the many women she knew. The many women who knew her. She was herself and the vision of herself, ‘the gulf between who I was and her vision of me’ filled by the ‘mythography’.
Near sighted, overweight, black girl growing up in Harlem, in the 1940’s. That quite says it all. Sums it all up. The missing of ‘home’, a home far away, being ‘unseen’, the correctness of everyday living. A childhood which understood, or rather felt, with confusion at times, why there were no stories about them. A childhood that questioned it. Tentatively. Defiantly. Loudly. Brazenly. A childhood, an adolescence that was looking for an affirmation of just being whoever she was. She walks through life stumbling, losing way, finding it again. Finding love in places she didn’t expect. Seeing out adventures and memories. Holding on to her ideas of who she was and what others thought of her.
“…how very difficult it is at times for people to see who or what they are looking at, particularly when they don’t want to.”
Throughout the narrative there are people who fit into the group of ‘don’t want to’. They don’t see ‘her’ because their own perceptions are perhaps clouded by their own identity. Perhaps that is why her companions did not see the struggles of being a ‘black’ lesbian. For them the identity of being a lesbian encompassed all. Even her partner did not notice the comment of the old lady at the laundry. She (Mauriel) should try on ‘showing her legs’ which was bestowed at her. Muriel, Lesbian, White.
This book is not just a narrative of past events, a journal entry of memories and affect. It is a realisation of the many different facets that make experiences that turn into memories, worth remembering and worth forgetting. It is about being of colour. Being a woman. Being a woman having a different sexual orientation.
This book is about identity. About having one, questioning it, coming to terms with it, struggling with it, wearing it like a crown and holding it like a shield. The many that she was.
Identity is part real and part imagery. It is always a Biomythography. A Term coined by Audre Lorde herself, describes ‘identity’ as to what it is. A blend of who we are, who we were and who we aspire to be. Realities and imaginations, history and aspirations, stories of identity weaves back and forth between the many different realms of the world.
‘Zami’ a Carriacou name for women who work the field as friends and lovers.
‘Zami’ is a name of a collective. A group. A group that shapes and individual and individuals who shape the group.