Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Because Audre lives in a society that is so hostile towards her, much of her narrative is geared towards survival and self-preservation. The implication, therefore, of this pursuit of self-preservation and survival is that Audre is constantly subject to attack and violence. In this way, Audre sees herself as being in a similar social position to the Rosenbergs: “The Rosenberg’s struggle became synonymous for me with being able to live in this country at all, with being able to survive in hostile surroundings” (149). As a black woman, and especially as a black lesbian, Audre is always subject to the violence and hostility of the rest of society.

However, this sense of self-preservation begins even earlier than Audre’s conception of larger systemic issues such as racism and misogyny, as she fears constant physical reprisals from her parents growing up. Audre does not begin speaking until after she can read, potentially out of self-preservation: “I don’t know if I didn’t talk earlier because I didn’t know how, or if I didn’t talk because I had nothing to say that I would be allowed to say without punishment. Self-preservation starts very early in West Indian families” (21-22).

Before Audre even speaks, she is able to understand the looming threat of punishment and physical violence that hangs above her head. It would seem, therefore, that not only does she have to contend with the physical violence of the outside world but rather also with the interior violence of her home life. In fact, it would appear as though Audre learned the techniques for self-preservation based on domestic fear, which often toes the line between corporal punishment and abuse.

However, Audre is not the only character who uses tactics of self-preservation in order to survive. Her mother, for example, uses perception and dismisses reality in order to survive the injustices of racism, whereas The Branded use group paranoia in order to survive high school. In high school Audre also notices that the other two black girls only hang out together in order to preserve a sense of self.

Many of Audre’s actions that the audience might view as morally questionable Audre justifies as acts of survival. Audre rationalizes both her choice to leave home and her choice to get an abortion as necessary for her survival:

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—this action was a kind of shift from safety towards self-preservation. It was a choice of pains. That’s what living was all about (111).

Similarly, Audre justifies the cruel way in which she abandons Bea before going to Mexico as an act of self-preservation: “It was self-preservation on my part, and I was horrified at my own cruelty. But I did not know any other way to do it” (152). Audre makes these decisions, difficult though they may be, because she feels as though they are the only choice she has that will allow her to survive.

As a bildungsroman concerning Lorde’s sexuality, sex plays a fairly large role within the narrative. However, Audre presents sex as something that is contradictory in that it is both seemingly forbidden and also ultimately human, as though to deny sex and sexuality is to deny the very nature of humanity. When Audre happens upon her father, asleep in pajama pants on the couch, she is surprised at how human his sex makes him:

I could see only the shadows of the vulnerable secrets shading the gap in his clothing, but I was suddenly shaken by this so-human image of him, and the idea that I could spy upon him and he not be aware of it, even in his sleep. I stepped back and closed the door quickly, embarrassed and ashamed of my own curiosity, but wishing his pajamas had gapped more so that I could final know what exactly was the mysterious secret men carried between their legs(62).

Audre finds sex to be mysterious, something that arouses her curiosity in a way that is almost separated from sex itself.

Throughout the exploration of her sexuality, especially as a young child, Audre is repeatedly embarrassed and fascinated by sex, as exemplified with her brief yet unavoidably-sexual interaction with Toni. When her mother interrupts this encounter, Audre “felt caught in the middle of an embarrassing and terrible act from which there can be no hiding. Frozen, I sat motionless as Toni, looking up and seeing my mother, slid nonchalantly off my lap, smoothing down her skirts as she did so” (40). Even though both she and Toni are children, they both somehow implicitly know that this situation in which they have been caught is inappropriate. In essence, Audre learns to be embarrassed much earlier than she understands what sex is or understands anything about her own sexuality.

The first time she has sex is with a man, and it seems to be completely devoid of her own sexuality or any sense of herself whatsoever. In fact, Audre finds sex with men to be “pretty dismal and frightening and a little demeaning” (104) despite the fact that everyone says she’ll get used to it. Audre’s first encounter with sex is fairly traumatic, and remains traumatic until she learns to associate herself with the act of sex; that is, until she considers what she wants during sex, namely to be with a woman: “Loving Ginger that night was like coming home to a joy I was meant for, and I only wondered, silently, how I had not always known that it would be so” (139). When Audre finally allows herself to be in a sexual relationship with a woman, she finds a sense of belonging and feels like she is finally home.

The Branded are a group of girls, most of whom are white, that Audre becomes friends with in high school. Various members show up intermittently throughout the latter half of the narrative. At first, Audre only interacts with them during school but after she moves out of her mother’s house, some of The Branded come over to her place and have parties. The Branded help Audre explore her burgeoning sexuality, mostly by kissing and cuddling beneath the covers. However, she never does anything more than that; her relationship with many of them propels her to seek an actual sexual relationship with a woman, though. Audre transitions from being a member of The Branded to being a kind of mother for many of these girls, always providing them a place to stay in order to avoid their parents or the law.

More than anything, The Branded are a group of outcasts drawn together by the commonality of their lack of belonging. They perform séances and write poetry together: “In high school, my best friends were ‘The Branded,’ as our sisterhood of rebels sometimes called ourselves. We never talked about those differences that separated us, only the ones that united us against the others” (81). The girls believe that they can conquer discrimination by ignoring it, embodying the doctrine of colorblindness that became so prominent in the sociopolitical climate of the next few decades. The girls believe in self-preservation through the masking of difference and see suffering as a virtue. The Branded represent one of Audre’s first attempts to create a community of women, although eventually she realizes how silly and naïve many of these girls are.

Perception is important throughout the narrative, especially when Audre is young. As a child, she finds that most of her perception is shaped by her mother due largely in part to her relative isolation from the rest of the world:

But it was so typical of my mother when I was young that if she couldn’t stop white people from spitting on her children because they were Black, she would insist it was something else. It was so often her approach to the world; to change reality. If you can’t change reality, change your perceptions of it (18).

As a dominating figure, her mother attempts to change reality by changing her perception of it. In this way, she believes that she can change the reality for her daughters by refusing to acknowledge something like racism. Linda believes that if she does not acknowledge the existence of racism, then it will not affect her daughters. However, Audre eventually learns that no matter how one attempts to alter one’s perception of reality, injustices still exist.