Audre Lorde - Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - A Biomythography

Sister Outsider:Essays & Speeches

By Audre Lorde

Among the elements that make the book so good are its personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness.New York Times

Paper ISBN-13: 978-0-89594-141-1 ISBN-10: 0-89594-141-4

From Wedded Wife to Lesbian Life:Stories of Transformation

Edited by Deborah Abbott and Ellen Farmer

deals on a compelling, personal level with most of the problems facing lesbians, especially those who have been married-conflicts with family, custody battles, financial strains, struggles to achieve independence and a sense of wholeness.

Ellen Lewin, Ph.D., author of Lesbian Mothers

Paper ISBN-13: 978-0-89594-766-6 ISBN-10: 0-89594-766-8

The Politics of Reality:Essays in Feminist Theory

By Marilyn Frye

This is radical feminist theory at its best: clear, careful and critical.Signs

Paper ISBN-13: 978-0-89594-099-5 ISBN-10: 0-89594-099-X

Text copyright 1982 by Audre Lorde

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crossing Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
www.tenspeed.com

Crossing Press and the Crossing Press colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published by Persephone Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lorde, Audre.
Zami, a new spelling of my name.
I. Title
PS3562.075Z23 1982 813.54 82-15086
Parts of this book in earlier versions have appeared in Heresies, Conditions, Sinister Wisdom, Azalea, The Iowa Review, and Callaloo.

eISBN: 978-0-307-78081-2

v3.1

May I live conscious of my debt to all the people who make life possible.

From the bottom of my heart I thank each woman who shared any piece of the dreams/myths/histories that give this book shape.

In particular I wish to acknowledge my gratitude to: Barbara Smith for her courage in asking the right question and her faith that it could be answered; Cherre Moraga for listening with her third ear and hearing; and to them both for their editorial fortitude; Jean Millar for being there, when I came up for the second time, with the right book; Michelle Cliff for her Island ears, green bananas, and fine, deft pencil; Donald Hill who visited Carriacou and passed the words on; Blanche Cook for moving history beyond nightmare into structures for the future; Clare Coss who connected me with my matrilineage; Adrienne Rich who insisted the language could match and believed that it would; the writers of songs whose melodies stitch up my years; Bernice Goodman who first made a difference of difference; Frances Clayton who holds it all together, for never giving up; Marion Masone who gave a name to forever; Beverly Smith for reminding me to stay simple; Linda Belmar Lorde for my first principles of combat and survival; Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins and Jonathan Lorde-Rollins who help keep me honest and current; Ma-Mariah, Ma-Liz, Aunt Anni, Sister Lou and the other Belmar women who proofread my dreams; and others who I can not yet afford to name.

To Helen, who made up the best adventures

To Blanche, with whom I lived many of them

To the hands of Afrekete

In the recognition of loving lies an answer to despair.

To whom do I owe the power behind my voice, what strength I have become, yeasting up like sudden blood from under the bruised skins blister?

My father leaves his psychic print upon me, silent, intense, and unforgiving. But his is a distant lightning. Images of women flaming like torches adorn and define the borders of my journey, stand like dykes between me and the chaos. It is the images of women, kind and cruel, that lead me home.

To whom do I owe the symbols of my survival?

Days from pumpkin until the years midnight, when my sisters and I hovered indoors, playing potsy on holes in the rosy linoleum that covered the living-room floor. On Saturdays we fought each other for the stray errand out of doors, fought each other for the emptied Quaker Oats boxes, fought each other for the last turn in the bathroom at nightfall, and for who would be the first one of us to get chickenpox.

The smell of the filled Harlem streets during summer, after a brief shower or the spraying drizzle of the watering trucks released the rank smell of the pavements back to the sun. I ran to the corner to fetch milk and bread from the Short-Neck Store-Man, stopping to search for some blades of grass to bring home for my mother. Stopping to search for hidden pennies winking like kittens under the subway gratings. I was always bending over to tie my shoes, delaying, trying to figure out something. How to get at the money, how to peep out the secret that some women carried like a swollen threat, under the gathers of their flowered blouses.

To whom do I owe the woman I have become?

DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighborhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem. Even though I tied my shoes and tried to peep under her blouse as she passed by, I never spoke to DeLois, because my mother didnt. But I loved her, because she moved like she felt she was somebody special, like she was somebody Id like to know someday. She moved like how I thought gods mother must have moved, and my mother, once upon a time, and someday maybe me.

Hot noon threw a ring of sunlight like a halo on the top of DeLoiss stomach, like a spotlight, making me sorry that I was so flat and could only feel the sun on my head and shoulders. Id have to lie down on my back before the sun could shine down like that on my belly.

I loved DeLois because she was big and Black and special and seemed to laugh all over. I was scared of DeLois for those very same reasons. One day I watched DeLois step off the curb of 142nd Street against the light, slow and deliberate. A high yaller dude in a white Cadillac passed by and leaned out and yelled at her, Hurry up, you flat-footed, nappy-headed, funny-looking bitch! The car almost knocking her down. DeLois kept right on about her leisurely business and never so much as looked around.

To Louise Briscoe who died in my mothers house as a tenant in a furnished room with cooking privilegesno linens supplied. I brought her a glass of warm milk that she wouldnt drink, and she laughed at me when I wanted to change her sheets and call a doctor. No reason to call him unless hes real cute, said Miz Briscoe. Aint nobody sent for me to come, I got here all by myself. And Im going back the same way. So I only need him if hes cute, real cute. And the room smelled like she was lying.

Miz Briscoe, I said, Im really worried about you.

She looked up at me out of the corner of her eyes, like I was making her a proposition which she had to reject, but which she appreciated all the same. Her huge bloated body was quiet beneath the grey sheet, as she grinned knowingly.

Why, thats all right, honey. I dont hold it against you. I know you cant help it, its just in your nature, thats all.