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 A R T Y K U ŁY
Polish BiograPhical studies
2021, nr 9 isnn 2353-9291
DOI 10.15804/pbs.2021.01
an e t a o S t a S z e w S k a
ORCID: 0000-0002-3220-3289
alternative autoBiographical practiceS
on the example of zami. a new Spelling
of my name By audre lorde
S łowa klucze: autobiografia, biomitografia, Audre Lorde
K ey words: autobiography, biomythography, Audre Lorde
STRESZCZENIE
Celem artykułu jest przedstawienie alternatywnych praktyk autobiograficznych ko-
biet na przykładzie książki Audre Lorde pt. „Zami. A New Spelling of My Name”.
Wydana w 1982 roku, jest jedną z pierwszych napisanych przez kobietę książek, zry-
wających z tradycyjnym, utożsamianym z męskim (wzorowanym m.in. na „Wyzna-
niach” Jean-Jacquesa Rousseau) pisarstwem autobiograficznym. Lorde świadomie
nadaje swojej autobiograficznej opowieści formę wykraczającą poza autobiografię,
zarówno pod względem formy, jak i treści. Alternatywny wymiar „Zami” odzwiercie-
dla się przede wszystkim w próbie zerwania z linearnym zapisem o życiu. Autorka
przeplatała ze sobą wątki z różnych okresów jej życia, po to, aby skupić się na ukaza-
niu procesu wewnętrznego rozwoju, jakiego doświadczyła jako Czarna kobieta, po-
etka i feministka, dorastająca w czasie segregacji rasowej w Stanach Zjednoczonych
(lata 50. i 60. XX w.). „Zami” to literacka próba wyjścia poza to, co historycznie, spo-
łecznie i kulturowo „przypisane” kobiecie – role i oczekiwania. Lorde łączy w swojej
opowieści fakty historyczne z fikcją literacką, przywołując m.in. fragmenty własnej
twórczości poetyckiej. Mamy zatem w „Zami” do czynienia z „biomitografią”, kate-
gorią ukutą przez wydawców książki, aby podkreślić jej nowatorstwo i oryginalność,

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połączenie historii, biografii (faktów z życia) i mitu (opowieści wyimaginowanej).
„Zami” to opowieść o kobiecie, która w sposób świadomy i podmiotowy tworzy opo-
wieść o sobie konstruując przy tym nowe perspektywy pisarstwa autobiograficznego.
ABSTRACT
The aim of this article is to present women’s alternative autobiographical practices
on the example of Audre Lorde’s “Zami. A New Spelling of My Name”. The book,
published in 1982, is one of the first non-canonical autobiographical writings by
women. The author intentionally gives her autobiographical story a form that goes
beyond the autobiography (rooted e.g. in Jean-Jacques Rousseau “Confessions”),
both in terms of form and content. The alternative dimension of “Zami” is reflected
mostly in Lorde’s attempt to break with a linear timeline of her story. She inter-
weaved different threads of her life to focus on her process of emancipation and
self-development as a Black woman, poet and feminist, growing up during the time
of racial segregation in the United States (1950s and 1960s). “Zami” emerged from
combining biography and myth, historical facts with her poems and dreams. This
way of Lorde’s autobiographical writing was categorized as „biomythography”.
Introduction
The term “autobiography” consists of three elements: autós, bíos, gráphō.
These parts mean respectively: “the writing self,” “life/experience” and
“writing1
”. Thus, autobiography literally means a description of one’s own
life. But since the term of autobiography meets different theoretical perspec-
tives, including epistemological ones, it is increasingly difficult to find a co-
herent definition of it. Philippe Lejeune says autobiography is a retrospective
prose narrative about one’s own life that focuses on the author’s personality2
.
He claims there is an autobiographical pact between reader and writer, con-
firmed by the use of the author’s name for both protagonist and narrator3
.
1
A. Reid, A Dictionary of the English Language, Containing the Pronunciation, Etymol-
ogy, and Explanation of All Words Authorized by Eminent Writers: To which are Added, a Vo-
cabulary of the Roots of English Words, and an Accented List of Greek, Latin, and Scripture
Proper Names, New York 1857, p. 39.
2
P. Lejeune, “The Autobiographical Pact.” On Autobiography, Minneapolis 1988 [1987],
p. 4.
3
Ibidem, p. 3–30.

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Louis A. Renza suggests that autobiography should be defined as a unique
phenomenon that is neither fiction nor non-fiction, nor a blend of the former
and the latter. “Autobiography, in short, transforms empirical facts into arte-
facts: it is definable as a form of “prose fiction”4
. Estelle S. Jelinek considers
autobiography as a work that each author writes with the intention of its
being his/her story – whatever form, or content, or style it takes. “Personality
and writing skill are what shape an autobiography,” she writes5
. According to
Jelinek “Each autobiography, therefore, is unique and defines a formal defini-
tion that subsumes all autobiographies”6
.
In the 1970s James Olney created a theory of autobiography by taking the
term “autobiography” beyond the boundaries of genre and history. Not only
almost every literary text but also works on history, philosophy, physics or
theology can be an autobiography7
. Autobiography “emancipated” itself from
a narrow framework of one specific genre. Olney argues that autobiography is
an act of self-perception, and there is no significant difference between litera-
ture and other forms of expression. In this regard autobiography seems to be
an individual manner of perceiving, organising and understanding the world
rather than an account of events: the experience of self remains the only com-
mon feature of all autobiographies.
The core of autobiography are experiences written down by the author. The
gesture of writing down may concern different, even the most insignificant
events, but “the gesture is always linked with some individual, specific experi-
ence8
”. Although there are cases when writing becomes the main activity in
one’s life (writing becomes life)9
, generally authors of autobiographical writ-
ings mostly live the “lived life”, not the “written life”. Autobiographical writing
can be treated as a specific type of cultural practice whose “primary function
4
L.A. Renza, The Veto of the Imagination: A Theory of Autobiography, “New Literary
History”, vol. 9, no. 1, 1977, p. 2.
5
E.S. Jelinek, The Tradition of Women’s Autobiography, Philadelphia 2004, p. 12.
6
Ibidem, p. 13–14.
7
J. Olney, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography, Princeton 2017 [1972],
p. 3.
8
P. Rodak, Między zapisem a literaturą. Dziennik polskiego pisarza w XX wieku, Warsza-
wa 2011, p. 117.
9
The cases of Henri-Frédéric Amiel (“Journal”) and Marie Bashkirtseff (Marie
Bashkirtseff: “The Journal of a Young Artist 1860–1884”).

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is not to give the word a specific textual form but to act with the word by
writing it down10
”. Sidonie Smith even argues that “What Judith Butler says
of gender performativity can be reframed in terms of autobiographical per-
formativity11
”. In this sense, autobiographical writing can be understood as
the expressions of autobiographical writing, the same way as gender is the
expressions of gender. According to Butler “There is no gender identity behind
the expressions of gender… identity is performatively constituted by the very
‘expressions’ that are said to be its results12
”. There is an emphasis on verbs,
not nouns: writing an autobiography involves the author’s performance of
storytelling. Since autobiographical storytelling is one of the modern ways of
(re)constructing identity13
, it affects not only the manner of interpreting the
described experiences but also influences the author’s behaviour and attitude.
These influences are noticeable and experienced beyond the sphere of text.
Thus, there is a performative aspect of autobiographical writing. It is the evi-
dence of “acting with words”, reflected in life praxis.
Alternative autobiographical practices
Writing in 1st person may take various forms and types of autobiographi-
cal writing. These include journals, diaries, memoires, letters as well as less
popular forms such as quodlibet or bric á brac14
. As regards autobiographies
written by women, there are texts which are extremely “rich in interesting,
unique, original and highly-personalised genological solutions15
”. Women’s
autobiographies develop and change, taking further forms; these forms are
often deliberately very different from traditional, canonical ones, dominated
10
P. Rodak, Między zapisem a literaturą…, p. 33.
11
S. Smith, Performativity, Autobiographical Practice, Resistance, “a/b: Auto/Biogra-
phy Studies”, vol. 10, No. 1, 1995, p. 18.
12
J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, London 1990,
p. 24–5.
13
A. Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age,
Stanford 1991, p. 76.
14
A. Pekaniec, Kobieca literatura dokumentu osobistego (Jak perspektywa feministyczna
Zmieniła teorie i praktyki lekturowe?), „Women Online Writing”, vol. 3, 2014, p. 8.
15
A. Pekaniec, Nie tylko dzienniki. Oryginalne warianty kobiecej literatury dokumentu
osobistego (na wybranych przykładach), „Ruch Literacki”, vol. 53 (4–5), 2012, p. 451.

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by the androcentric perspective (linear, related to the past and time, written
in a straight manner and focused on the male subject). The ongoing tenden-
cies result even in replacing the term “autobiography” by terms not associated
with women’s autobiographical writings.
When discussing women’s autobiographies, a turning point is the publica-
tion of a collection of essays “Women’s Autobiography: Essays in Criticism”,
edited by Estelle C. Jelinek and issued in 1980. Main argument of this book is
that autobiographies written by women have been ignored in history because
they have not followed the pattern of men’s autobiographies. It began a dis-
cussion about the history of women’s autobiographies, and as a result, about
the need to emphasize the distinctiveness of women’s biographical experi-
ences. According to Jelinek women differ from men in the choice of subject
matter and the self-image they make in autobiographies as well as the style in
which they write. She argues that men’s autobiographies are focused more on
professional lives (“success stories and histories of their eras”) while women’s
stories emphasize personal details – domestic issues and relationships with
other people.
In order to differentiate their autobiographical writings, women autobi-
ographies were named “autogynography16
”. The part “gyno” is to emphasize
that women’s stories about themselves are different from those of men. Its
author, Donna Stanton, underlines that the main aim of autogynography is
to find and to raise the status of women’s autobiographical writings, so far
excluded and ignored in encyclopaedias and studies on the history and origin
of autobiography. Thus the point is that the existing canon of autobiographi-
cal writings (including “Confessions” by Saint Augustine and “Confessions”
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau) should be complemented with autobiographies
written by women. For example, Mary G. Mason recalls the autobiographical
writings of medieval authors such as Juliana of Norwich, Margaret Kempe, or
Margaret Cavendish17
. Another aim of autogynography is to create a theory
of women’s autobiographies, taking into account the variety of biographical
16
D.C. Stanton, The Female autograph : theory and practice of autobiography from the
tenth to the twentieth century, Chicago 1987.
17
M.G. Mason, The Other Voice: Autobiographies of Women Writers, [in:] Autobiogra-
phy: Essays Theoretical and Critical, ed. J. Olney, Princeton 1980, pp. 207–235.

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experiences and forms of writing resulting from social, cultural, economic or
even sexual differences.
Stanton also suggests freedom of autogynography – women are free not only to
choose the subject and style of their autobiographies but also are free to reject any
assumptions of referentiality in the process of autobiographical writing. As Sidonie
Smith and Julia Watson write,
“[Stanton] proposed this term to suggest the centrality of gendered subjectivity to
the literary production of the self-referential acts. […] Stanton notes that, at the mo-
ment of second-wave feminism in which she was writing, ‘the gender of the author’
‘did make a difference’ because the refusal of the referential status of the signature
threatened to perpetuate ‘female anonymity’18
”.
Apart from autogynography, other terms are used to describe women’s au-
tobiographies. Thus, Smith and Watson – in the collection “Women, Autobi-
ography, Theory” from 1998 – suggest the term “life-writing”. Life writing is
“an overarching term used for a variety of nonfictional modes of writing that
claim to engage the shaping of someone’s life19
”. This term stresses that the
“self” does not exist separately from the narrative and is the effect of an auto-
biographical story20
. “Such writing can be biographical, novelistic, historical,
or an explicit self-reference to the writer21
.”
The suggestions of new terms refer to various concepts of self and identity
within different experiences, social, ethnic, racial affiliations as well as cul-
tural backgrounds and sexual preferences. Apart from the terms mentioned
above there are also the following categories which refer to particular qualities
of women’s autobiographical writing: “autography,” namely a term describing
autobiographical writings of female authors who identify themselves with
feminism, and “autobiographics,” i.e. a term emphasizing the significance of
18
S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography: A Guide to Interpreting Life Narra-
tives, 2nd
ed., Minneapolis 2010, p. 187.
19
1998: 17
20
S. Smith and J. Watson, Introduction: Situating Subjectivity in Women’s Autobio-
graphical Practices, [in:] Women, Autobiography, Theory. A Reader, eds. S. Smith, J. Watson,
Madison/London 1998, pp. 3–52.
21
S. Smith and J. Watson, Reading Autobiography…, p. 4.

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writing an autobiography in the process of construction of identity and sub-
jectivity of woman22
.
As Leigh Gilmore claims autobiographical writing, strictly related to self-
reflection and self-analysis, is tantamount to the process of writing oneself.
“The autobiographical subject is a representation, and this representation is
thus its construction23
”. It is shaped by autobiography, not by experience. It
“provides a stage where women writers, born again in the act of writing, may
experiment with reconstructing the various discourses – of representation,
of ideology – in which their subjectivity has been formed24
.” As a result it em-
powers women writers to change the position of object into the subjectivity of
self-representational agency.
When using the term autobiographics, Gilmore argues that it offers those
elements of women’s self-representations that exceed and transgress the
meaning of autobiography because it is “not bound by a philosophical defi-
nition of the self-derived from Augustine25
.” She locates “[…] the subject of
autobiography in relation to discourses of identity and truth26
.” It focuses on
the contradictions in self-representation and enables potential experiments,
in particular, with the name.
An example of women’s alternative autobiographical practices is “Zami.
A New Spelling of My Name” by Audre Lorde. The book is one of the first non-
canonical autobiographical writings of women. I consider it as a text where the
author makes confrontations with political and cultural discourses responsi-
ble for gender policy and subject of autobiography. I discuss this argument in
the next paragraphs, starting with information about Audre Lorde and then
discussing a few significant characteristics of “Zami”: title and content of the
book, author’s experiments with her name and finally, the category of biomy-
thography.
22
L. Gilmore, Autobiographics. A Feminist Theory of Women’s Self-Representation, Itha-
ca and London 1994, pp. 65–105.
23
Ibidem, p. 25.
24
Ibidem, p. 85.
25
Ibidem, p. 42
26
Ibidem, p. 25

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Audre Lorde
Audre Lorde, in fact Audrey Geraldine Lorde, was born in New York in 1934.
She was interested in poetry from an early age – she made her debut as a poet
in “Seventeen” magazine when she was in high school. She graduated from
Hunter College at New York (bachelor’s degree) and next studied at Colum-
bia University (master’s degree in library science). She worked as a librarian
until her first volume of poetry, “First Cities” (1968) was published. As a so-
cial activist she actively participated in many initiatives supporting women’s
rights, in particular women of African origin (between 1984 and 1992 Lorde
stayed in Berlin where she cooperated with a group of Afro-Germans). She
also wrote essays and theoretical papers, including “Sister Outsider: Essays
and Speeches” (1984). In her papers, both in poetry and essays, she often dis-
cussed racism and sexuality, referring to experience as a source of perception.
She stressed the multidimensionality of the category “woman” – she defined
herself in the following way: Black, lesbian, mother, poet, warrior. She suf-
fered from breast cancer. In 1981 she published journals about her struggle
with cancer, “The Cancer Journals”. Audre Lorde died in 1992.
“Zami,” namely?
“Zami. A New Spelling of My Name” was published in 1982. This is a twelfth
work written by Audre Lorde. The publisher describes it as a biomythography,
i.e. a combination of history, biography and myth. In “Zami”, Lorde inter-
weaves historical facts with experiences, dreams, lyrics or verses of poems she
wrote since her teen years. “Zami” can thus be identified as a new type of au-
tobiographical writing. Although Lorde keeps the retrospective, chronological
narrative and writes in 1st
person, the objective of “Zami”is rather to interpret
the past freely, not to precisely describe facts and events from life.
The title of the book, “Zami. A New Spelling of My Name”, refers to the new
name/new spelling of her name: Zami. Why did Lorde take a new name? Why
did she do that? Maria Pilar Sánchez Calle argues that “Zami” is partly a “slave
narrative”; it resembles a custom from the time of slavery when freed slaves
changed their names. By giving her autobiography a name that is different from

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the one given to her by her parents, Lorde makes herself a subject, becomes
free. She expresses her protest against the control of the dominating culture27
.
When naming her autobiographical story “Zami”, Lorde intentionally re-
fers to the meaning this word has. “Zami” denotes a mythical community of
women. Lorde quotes an old Afro-Caribbean myth about women who “work
together as friends and lovers28
”. The women lived on Carriacou, an island sit-
uated on the Caribbean Sea, once known as the West Indies. In Lorde’s book,
Carriacou is at the same time a real island and also a fantasy, figment of her
imagination, a metaphor of the home and community she feels a part of. She
writes about the island: “Carriacou, a magic name like cinnamon, nutmeg,
mace…29
”. Lorde admits that stories about Carriacou were her mother’s fanta-
sy. As noted by Maria Pilar Sánchez Calle, in Caribbean culture “zami” means
“lesbian” from French les ames30
.
Content of Zami
When discussing Audre Lorde’s biomythography, I would like to examine the
topics that appear in “Zami”. I identify the following:
1. Home and community;
2. Relationships with women;
3. Experiences concerning sexuality and corporeal nature;
4. Racism.
“Zami” starts with a description of Lorde’s childhood. She dedicated a lot
of attention to the memories and dreams she had had as a little girl.
“I grew up feeling like an only planet, or some isolated world in a hostile, or at
best, unfriendly, firmament. […] Most of my childhood fantasies revolved around how
I might acquire this little female person for my companion31
”.
27
M.P. Calle Sánchez, Audre Lorde’ Zami And Black Women’s Autobiography: Tradition
and Innovation, “Bells: Barcelona English language and literature studies”, vol. 7, 1996,
p. 163.
28
A. Lorde, Zami. A New Spelling of My Name, Berkeley 1982, p. 255.
29
Ibidem, p. 14
30
M.P. Calle Sánchez, Audre Lorde’ Zami…, p. 163.
31
A. Lorde, Zami…, p. 34.

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In this short fragment, Lorde implies that the feeling of loneliness and in-
comprehension accompanied her since her early childhood. As a result of huge
short-sightedness, reality seems “blended” to her, but because of that world
was more favourable to her imagination.
The reality in which Lorde grew up was New York during the 1940s and
1950s. The social climate of that time was dominated by racial prejudice and
segregation. Although Lorde faced racism many times as a child and a young
woman,theword“racism”didnotexistinherparents’language.Lorde’smoth-
er explained the contemptuous spitting on Black Americans to her daughter
by the bad manners of white people, not by racism. Even when her whole fam-
ily was thrown out of the ice-cream shop (seats were only for Whites), her
parents did not react in any way. Pretending that racism does not exist was
a survival strategy in Lorde’s home: “I had grown up in such an isolated world
that it was hard for me to recognize difference as anything other than a threat
[…] I had no words for racism32
”.
Another important topic in “Zami”concerns Lorde’s experiences from ado-
lescence. One of them was a suicidal death of Lorde’s friend, Gennie. After her
sudden and tragic death, Lorde felt guilty, she could not cope with the thought
that she had not supported Gennie enough and stopped her from committing
suicide. Their friendship had not been enough for Gennie to live for. “None of
us had given her a good enough reason to stay here, not even me33
”.
After graduating from high school, Lorde left home and began an inde-
pendent life. Her relationship with her parents was broken. Lorde’s decision
about moving out was met with indifference and lack of interest by her par-
ents. Only a few days after the beginning of 1952, she found out that she
was pregnant. She was nearly 18 and just split up with her (white) boyfriend.
Lonely and without money, she decided to have an abortion.
Lorde describes not only her fear before and after the abortion but also the
reasons why she had the abortion and how it went. She even includes the de-
tails about difficulties in finding a suitable person who would agree to conduct
the abortion. Lorde describes the abortion as a critical moment of her life.
32
Ibidem, p. 81.
33
Ibidem, p. 100.

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“I dared myself to feel any regrets. […] That night about 8 P.M., I was lying curled
tightly on my bed, trying to distract myself from the stabbing pains in my groin by
deciding whether or not I wanted to dye my hair coal black. I couldn’t begin to think
about the risks I was running. But another piece of me was being amazed at my own
daring. I had done it. Even more than my leaving home, this action which was tearing
my guts apart and from which I could die except I wasn’t going to H; his action was
a kind of shift from safety towards self-preservation. It was a choice of pains. That’s
what living was all about. I clung to that and tried to feel only proud34
”.
The abortion affected also her relations with others: “Never a word about
what was going on inside of me. Now it was my secret; the only way I could
handle it was alone35
”. Loneliness is a feeling that Lorde recognizes well, es-
pecially in the context of relationships with women. She learns and develops
her sexuality by making close friendships and erotic – lesbian – relationships
with women.
“Meeting other lesbians was very difficult, except for the bars which I did not go
to because I did not drink. One read The Ladder and the Daughters of Bilitis newslet-
ter and wondered where all the other gay-girls were. Often, just finding out another
woman was gay was enough of a reason to attempt a relationship, to attempt some
connection in the name of love without first regard to how ill-matched the two of you
might really be. Such were the results of loneliness…36
”.
Relationships with women are the main topic of “Zami”. Lorde gives them
an identity potential. In the introduction (Prologue) she asks herself: “To
whom do I owe the woman I have become?37
”. Thanks to the women she met
and loved she learned about herself. Eudora, Muriel, Marie, Genevieve, Gin-
ger, and Afrekete, among others, made her become the person she is at the
moment of writing “Zami”. “Every woman I have ever loved has left her print
upon me38
”. She writes about relationships with other women as the meta-
phor of a journey and this journey is a transforming existential experience for
her. “I remember how being young and Black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of
34
Ibidem, p. 111.
35
Ibidem.
36
Ibidem, p. 150.
37
Ibidem, p. 4–5.
38
Ibidem, p. 255.

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it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was
purely hell39
”.
The prelude to the stories about relationships with other women begins
with a portrait of Lorde’s mother Linda; it emerges from the first chapters of
“Zami”. This relationship – the first relationship of a daughter with another
woman – is described in two ways. One is warm and colourful, full of differ-
ent colours and flavours. The image of her mother – gentle and romantic – is
directly related to her stories about her place of birth, Carriacou. When re-
ferring to her mother’s stories, Lorde writes (in fact in the Epilogue, but it is
important for the interpretation of “Zami”): “There it is said that the desire
to lie with other women is a drive from the mother’s blood40
”. Lorde admires
her mother for her knowledge and her pride when striding along New York
streets; a mother who idealises the life before emigration to the United States.
At the same time Lorde does not accept her mother’s silence, a kind of pas-
sivity in the face of racism. Audre is afraid of her mother because she is strict
and reprimanding, overbearing and controlling. Despite being resourceful and
preoccupied with the house, her mother is emotionally unavailable, insensi-
tive and too tired to smile and hug her daughter. Audre creates her own world
based on her mother’s stories, but without her presence. The bond between
the women is getting looser and looser, and finally Lorde dreams about leav-
ing home as soon as possible. She describes her mother as a powerful woman,
but this strength, easy to be seen from outside, was not an internal strength,
as Lorde argues: “Being Black and foreign and female in New York City in the
twenties and thirties was not simple, particularly when she was quite light
enough to pass for white, but her children weren’t41
”.
Biomythography
Although “Zami” concerns Lorde’s self-development and efforts to become
a writer, the construction and reconstruction of self occurs through new trac-
39
Ibidem, p. 176.
40
Ibidem, p. 256.
41
Ibidem, p. 17. Audre Lorde’s mother’s skin was fairer than her husband’s and
daughters.

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es and terms. Lorde is more interested in comparing her internal and external
landscapes than in documenting her life in a linear manner42
. For her, writing
is a method of looking at herself; the significance of her story does not depend
on the authenticity of the content; her intention – as Sánchez Calle continues
– is to describe life experiences in her own words. She does it with myths and
poetry. Lorde does not find any pattern for her story so she creates a new type
of an autobiographical text: biomythography. When she recalls a childhood
experience, she writes:
“My lifelong dream of a doll-baby come to life had in fact come true. Here she
stood before me now, smiling and pretty in an unbelievable wine-red velvet coat with
a wide, wide skirt that flared out over dainty little lisle-stocking legs. Her feet were
clad in a pair of totally impractical, black patent—leather mary-jane shoes, whose sil-
ver buckles glinted merrily in the drab noon light43
”.
The story about a girl Lorde (at that time she was four) met on the porch
is the best example of biomythography in “Zami”. At first it seems that she is
talking about her dream. “It lasted for about ten minutes,” she writes. Waiting
for her mother, she imagines that suddenly a girl appears and wants to play
with her. Lorde is fascinated with her new friend. She wants to touch her, to
hug her, to fondle her. When Lorde’s mother comes, Lorde believes that the
girl will disappear, that all this will be an illusion, but her mother notices the
girl, and says something about inappropriate winter clothes. Following her
mother, Lorde has to say goodbye to the girl. When she returns home, the
girl is not there. Despite Lorde’s pleadings, the girl never appears again. Lorde
wonders whether that did happen. Or maybe it was just a dream44
?
Home and journey are two recurring themes, not to say metaphors, in
“Zami”. In Lorde’s story, home has mythical connotations and does not refer
to her family home. It is the symbol of “a magical place,” some idea about Car-
riacou from where Lorde’s parents arrived in New York. On the other hand,
leaving her family home and her first friendships as well as affairs with women
create almost a mythical theme of a journey during which Lorde grows up and
42
M.P. Calle Sánchez, Audre Lorde’ Zami…, p. 163.
43
A. Lorde, Zami…, p. 37.
44
A. Lorde, Zami…, p. 36–42.

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gains experience. The metaphor of a journey refers both to the real changes in
the place of residence and the author’s symbolic journey inside herself.
Lorde creates the image of herself in two ways: first is linked with other
women, mythical and potential lovers, i.e. “women oriented towards wom-
en45
”. Lorde not only wants to be a part of the community, to be like a descend-
ant of Carriacou ancestors, she also creates it on her own as she sometimes
gives her flat to her friends and acquaintances. In contrast to her mother’s
home where she was not allowed to invite any guests, adult Audre’s flats are al-
ways open to her friends, even though they are small and have several metres
only. Since Lorde started an independent life, her home is open, women meet
there to talk, work, laugh and make love.
Another way of Lorde’s self-creation involves referring to the category of
differences. Lorde dreams about a harmonious community of women – free
from sexism, racism or classism – but it is a dream and Lorde is aware of that.
Every day she faces homophobia among Blacks and racism among Whites.
Since she treats women subjectively, loving them, she does not idealise them.
She is grateful to all women who helped her, even if that help meant “pushing
me into the merciless sun46
”.
When constructing the story about herself, Lorde treats identity as a plu-
ralistic agglomerate: her identity is the identity of a Black woman, a lesbian,
a poet… Her mother plays an important role in the process of “shaping” Audre
Lorde, in truth, “Zami”. Lorde refers to the relationship with her mother also
to recreate the sources of her own creativity. She writes: “I am a reflection
of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers47
”. It is Lorde’s
mother, a woman from the Caribbean, who gave her daughter the story about
Carriacou. Based on this story, Lorde creates her own idea of paradise, i.e.
a women’s mythical home and community: “Once home was a far way off,
a place I had never been to but knew well out of my mother’s mouth48
”.
45
L. Gilmore, Autobiographics…, p. 28.
46
A. Lorde, Zami…, p. 5.
47
A. Lorde, Zami…, p. 32.
48
Ibidem, p. 13.

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Changing of the name and a new spelling
In the case of Audre Lorde’s book, the name – as a basic characteristic of one’s
identity – becomes the main focus of attention. Lorde gives her name as Zami
and the change of name is mentioned already in the title of the book: “Zami.
A New Spelling of My Name”. But not only the spelling of Lorde’s name has
changed. But naming herself Zami, she discloses that being a lesbian has
been an important part of her identity. It is noteworthy that it is not the first
change of the name/in the name that Lorde made. Earlier she removed the “y”
at the end of her name Audrey. In this way Audre was created – this name she
used as a writer and social activist.
Thus, Lorde does not give the book a title that would directly refer to her
name – Audrey. She intentionally abandons classic autobiography where the
status of the author, narrator and character of the text is the same. In her case,
the departure from autobiography is an expression of her protest, a refusal to
recognise herself in the current limited borders of sex/gender and the genre of
autobiography. Avoiding unification, she chooses a new term (biomythogra-
phy) to describe herself and, in this way, to stress her polyphonic self49
. Lorde
looks for self-representation through different categories of identity and writ-
ing; as Leigh Gilmore writes, she makes herself a subject by looking at other
textual forms of self-representation and other geographies for her identity50
.
In “Zami”, “homes, identities and names have a mythical character51
”. Thus,
she presents an alternative model of a woman’s development as well as a new
image of women’s writings.
Conclusion
“Zami” was published in 1982, but its story ends with the beginning of the
1960s. Lorde wrote “Zami” 20 years after the last events described in the
book. She writes it as a highly regarded poet and Black feminist. She is a wom-
49
M.P. Calle Sánchez, Audre Lorde’ Zami…, p. 163.
50
L. Gilmore, Autobiographics…, p. 29.
51
Ibidem, p. 27.

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an who is aware of her sexuality and sexual identity. She describes herself as
a lesbian, but she does not define being a lesbian in sexual categories only.
For Lorde, all Black women are lesbians, because of the matriarchal nature of
Black women’s community, even if they are oppressed by patriarchy52
.
“Zami” seems to be not the first and not the last one of discussion Lorde
takes with herself both as a writer and a woman: Black feminist, lesbian,
mother, poet. She refuses to be labelled and to fit herself into any narrow or
single categorization based on binary and dichotomous, patriarchal and het-
erosexual norms in American patriarchal society that deny Black woman the
right to be a subject or push her on the sidelines as an outsider. Two years after
“Zami” came out, Lorde published a collection of essays and speeches, where
she supported other women in their process of empowerment. She writes:
“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable
women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference – those of us
who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older – know that survival
is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them
strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house53
”.
Lorde dismantles canonical autobiography (androcentric idea of life writ-
ing dominated by men) by writing her “Zami” – biomythography – one of the
first alternative autobiographical writings by women.
REFERENCES
Memories and Relations:
Lorde A., Zami. A New Spelling of My Name. Berkeley 1982.
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sider: Essays and Speeches, Berkeley 1984.
52
K. Hammond, An Interview with Audre Lorde, “American Poetry Review”, March/
April 1980, p. 18–21.
53
A. Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House [in:] Sister Out-
sider: Essays and Speeches, Berkeley 1984, p. 112.

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Articles:
Hammond K., An Interview with Audre Lorde, “American Poetry Review”, March/April
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