Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Zami: A New Spelling of my Name

Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde

48 reviews

halfbakedpoet's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

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aquakerwitch's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

4.5

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ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

”I didn’t know how I was going to bring my personal and political visions together, but I knew it had to be possible because I felt them both too strongly, and knew how much I needed them both to survive. I did not agree with Rhea and her progressive friends when they said that this was not what the revolution was about. Any world which did not have a place of me loving women was not a world in which I wanted to live, nor one which I could fight for.”

This book was simply incredible. There were so many layers of actual perfection to this entire work that I couldn’t even begin to touch on every detail that shone like a lighthouse beacon into every corner of my life—past, present, and future.

First of all, the writing was astonishingly, boneshakingly beautiful. The book is a memoir but it reads very much like literary fiction (probably why Lorde described it as a “biomythography”). I have actually never read a book as beautifully written as this one with so much genuine feeling, passion, vulnerability, and love—and hope! This book is *dripping* with hope and wow. So powerful and so beautiful.

There are a ton of important and impactful themes covered from Blackness to queerness, New York City in the mid-19th c., expat life in Mexico City during McCarthyism, the “progressive” revolution, and just Life in all of its general beauty and horribleness. She also spends a lot of time describing food and fashion which I thought added a layer of tangible reality that made my experience of her writing even that much more visceral.

There is just so much power and relevance in every sentence I have already found myself repeating my favorite quotes to myself as I think of them throughout the day in response to various memories and experiences. I could have read a thousand more pages of this book! Obviously going to be collecting more of her work.

“In a paradoxical sense, once I accepted my position as different from the larger society as well as from any single sub-society—Black or gay—I felt I didn’t have to try so hard. To be accepted. To look femme. To be straight. To look straight. To be proper. To look “nice”. To be liked. To be loved. To be approved. What I didn’t realize was how much harder I had to try merely to stay alive, or rather, to stay human. How much stronger a person I became in that trying.”

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questingnotcoasting's review

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

4.0

I read a couple of essays by Audre Lorde last year and immediately knew I wanted read more of her work. This was brilliant and I can see why it's such a beloved classic. The language is beautiful and there's a quality about it which felt like fiction, hence the term biomythography. I also found it fascinating reading about New York in the 1930s to 1950s because it's a period I didn't know much about.

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namizaela's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

4.0

This was a wonderful book, and Audre Lorde is such a great writer. For me, the main faults were that I had trouble connecting to her writing, maybe because the theme of the book shifted so suddenly from family to romantic love (which makes sense, because this is a memoir). Maybe this book would have worked better as a series of short stories or essays? Either way, Lorde is really amazing and she constructed a captivating narrative of her life.

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nibs's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

4.0

The autobiography of Audre Lorde, following her growing up and as a young adult, becoming herself. Going into this, I thought it would follow a greater period of time in her life, but the depth in which is explored her relationship with herself, her friends and her lovers was really good.

Reading this, I realised that I knew so little of the history and stories of gay women. Through growing up Black during segregation, to growing into one of the few Black gay-girls, Lorde's differences and needing to fight to survive is an ever-present part of the book. Learning the ins and outs of gay-girl culture in New York in the 1950s and how race fits into that (spoiler: it doesn't. race was erased), was so insightful, especially with the queer history often being dominated by white cis men.

The most captivating part for me was reading about when she went to Mexico

and felt visible for the first time in her life. Being seen in public as a person, and no longer looking at the ground while walking around

.

There are some parts of this which are a bit unreliable, in terms of facts and dates, which I guess is how it is a memoir. It is hard to remember all the exact details. A couple of those details threw me off, and I had to go back and check, but it was fine in the end. For example,

It says the kittens died from drinking turpentine as she and Muriel's relationship was falling apart, but then after they broke up and when she was going over to Kitty's place, she was thinking about whether the kittens would be fed

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aimiller's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

Just a fascinating, powerful, moving read. Lorde writes with such tenderness and care for women, even the difficult women in her life, and about her own growth, and lays out the problems that will continue to be with her for her life (making white lesbian women realize they ARE white, and ARE racist, just to name one.) It's also just. A beautiful book, one I will return to again and again, and one I strongly recommend other folks pick up if they haven't already!

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coffeeshopvibes's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective slow-paced

5.0

I wish this was required reading when I was in school. Audre Lorde discusses her life from childhood to about mid-twenties and explores being a queer black woman in the 40s and 50s. Her writing is raw, en capturing her experiences perfectly. She critiques her white queer counteparts and intersectionality (as it existed) in her time. This book deeply considers the experience of being a woman, both in a romantic and friendship sense, and encourages the reader to do the same.

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