ZAMI: A New Spelling of  my name

We met to discuss 'Zami: A new Spelling of my Name', a 1982 biomythography (?!) by American poet Audre Lorde (1934 - 1992), which combines history, biography, and myth.

The book is very much in two halves and many of us enjoyed the first section about Audre Lorde's childhood in Harlem. In many ways her childhood experiences were timeless and relatable, although some sections were heartbreaking - like Audre's mother protecting her from racist hate so she wouldn't feel the effects of it, which probably did her no favours in the longer term.

Several of us didn't get any further than these first few chapters finding Lorde's writing boring/repetitive, or just failing to engage as her style was too irritating.

The rest of us ploughed on, enjoying, at times, her flawless prose and the sensitivity of some of the earlier sex scenes. But also becoming lost in the politics - not just of race but of lesbians and also of the U.S. One of us felt she wasn't part of the audience the book was written for. In contrast, another saw it as a chance to stand in the shoes of someone very different from herself and to have some idea of how it felt to be a young, black, single lesbian in the late 1950's - way before LGBTQ+ kicked in as something known about to anyone outside of those niche groups.

It made us think about Diane Abbott getting in trouble for saying you can't hide being black - it's often the first thing someone sees about you.

Interestingly, we have a couple of group members who grew up in South Africa in the apartheid years, and another member with a German relative who grew up in World War 2 Germany, and we eased into a fairly thoughtful conversation about racism, how we haven't learned from history and are beginning to understand how brave you need to be to stand up to power both in Israel at the moment and also here in the UK. Also how in some parts of the U.S., anti-black sentiment is still alive and kicking.

Returning to Audre, those of us who read wider praised her poetry - but in the end there were just three members who gave Lorde's biomythography a thumbs up. She was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,”.... maybe we're still just not ready for her.