Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde

I admittedly did not know much about Audre Lorde when I began reading “Zami”. Growing up behind the Orange Curtain, we didn’t learn about black lesbian poets. When I sat on my couch reading for two days trying to finish the book before queereads, I became enthralled in her story. It felt as though she was sitting with me, reading to me, telling her story to me, just me. I felt like I connected to her, in some small way, a way in which I am not quite sure exists. When I was nearly two hundred pages in, I decided to look her up online to learn more, beyond the wonderful book I was holding in my hands. I didn’t know she had died nearly seventeen years ago of breast cancer. When I read this, my mind was jarred for a moment. And in that moment, I grasped the book tighter placing my hand over the printed words on the page to protect them. I thought, for that moment, that they might lift from the page and disappear, they seemed less stable, more apt to move around. I feared that the story would come undone. My image of her was changed, I thought she was still thriving and loving and writing. And now to read this vivid story of her youth makes me sad to know she is no longer around, and that there is no chance of me ever meeting her and getting to talk to this wonderful, brilliant, beautiful woman. The book, written ten years before her death and two years before my birth, is filled with visceral memories of childhood and food. Oh, the food - it did not help that I was quite hungry while I was reading her lengthy descriptions of the smells and tastes of home cooked meals. It was filled with her many different jobs and friends and lovers. “Zami” showed me a world I would never be a part of, the underground gay-girl scene in New York, particularly from the point of view of a black woman. I didn’t know that in the fifties, even in a bar specifically for dykes, the women had to be wearing at least three items of traditional female attire or they could be arrested for transvestitism. I didn't want to finish reading the book because that would mean my journey with her was over.

While online, I found a clip of Ms. Lorde reading one of her poems, A Song for Many Movements. Her voice was just as I had imagined it, smooth and steady and safe. I knew I had heard her reading to me, telling me her tale. I urge you to read this book, gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, queer, whatever you prefer to call yourself, man or woman or somewhere in between. This book will change you for the better.