Scan barcode
Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography by Audre Lorde
18 reviews
dominic_t's review against another edition
5.0
This is an amazing book that transcends the memoir genre. Lorde calls it a biomythography, and that really fits. She centers her analysis of her life on her relationships with women and explores how each woman shaped her. Her writing is so vivid and provides a window into what life was like for gay-girls (her term) in the northeast US in the 40s and 50s.
She wrote so beautifully about each relationship and really captured the experiences of infatuation, love, and heartbreak. I viscerally felt the highs and laws.
I also loved reading about the community of gay women she belonged to. It was a fascinating window into the past. She went into a lot of detail about her experience as a Black woman in a majority white community and explored the complexity of her friendships and relationships with white women. She also talked about her struggles to fit into the community as a woman who wasn't either butch or femme. I've read the perspectives of butches and femmes from communities like hers, and it was cool to get the perspective of someone who didn't fit in either role.
The progressive communities of that time were really homophobic and saw queerness as "bourgeoisie." In response to that, she wrote, "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...Any world which did not have a place for me loving women was not a world in which I wanted to live, nor one which I could fight for." That quote deeply resonates with me. I can feel both her pain and her hope.
This is not an easy read. She covers abuse, bigotry, and suicide in detail. Even though the book was filled with tragedy, I ended the book feeling hopeful. Throughout everything, she had a vision of a better world, and I was able to see it too.
Graphic: Blood, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Physical abuse, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Child abuse, Sexual content, Alcoholism, Animal death, Alcohol, Racism, and Rape
Moderate: Cancer
Minor: Racial slurs
meemawreads's review
4.5
In Zami (the Carriacou word essentially meaning "lesbian") we follow Audre Lorde through childhood, adolescence, and the start of her adulthood. I assume "biomythography" means she took some creative liberty in the storytelling. Judging by the richly remembered women and relationships she recounts, I imagine the liberties were taken in their precisely recounted days. I don't care what was real and what wasn't, this book about lesbians in the 1950s published in the 1980s gave me such a more three dimensional idea of American Lesbian ancestors. Lorde was an intersectional feminist years before the term was part of our popular lexicon. So good. Four and a half taters 🥔🥔🥔🥔🍠/🥔🥔🥔🥔🥔
Moderate: Physical abuse and Child abuse
venusdapoopiehead's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Abortion, Racism, Suicide, and Child abuse
Moderate: Rape, Homophobia, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis
christie_evelyn's review
4.25
Graphic: Racism
Moderate: Sexual assault, Racial slurs, Child abuse, Abortion, and Suicide
Minor: Homophobia and Mental illness
michaelion's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Death, Grief, Suicide, Xenophobia, and Racism
Moderate: Sexual assault, Child abuse, Ableism, Racial slurs, Child death, Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Drug use, Abortion, Sexual content, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Death of parent, and Self harm
Minor: Cultural appropriation, Mental illness, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Pedophilia, Cancer, Domestic abuse, Abandonment, Fatphobia, Outing, Infidelity, and Animal death
reading_mermaid's review
5.0
Graphic: Suicide, Abortion, Child abuse, and Suicide attempt
Moderate: Racism and Sexual content
Minor: Death of parent, Child death, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Rape, Alcoholism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Incest
quirkilybookish's review
5.0
Graphic: Abortion
Moderate: Self harm, Violence, Suicide attempt, Mental illness, Suicide, and Racism
Minor: Rape, Child abuse, Alcoholism, and Infidelity
carly_they_themsen's review against another edition
3.5
i have to read this again cause a lot if it went over my head. i read this as part of a book club but no one else showed up the week we read this book :[
still i thought it was really iconic and there were several passages like the part with the milk bottles, and the last chapter, and the part at the factory with the x ray machines, all really made an impression on me and im going to try to read it again when i am smarter so i can appreciate it more
[june 2023]
i had the chance to return to this book a year later, after reading sister outsider, and got to discuss it with a different book club. in many ways i enjoyed it even more this time. i appreciated her description of her relationship with her mom, and the meaning of the title and the polyamory stuff that comes up at the end of the book was clearer also. i was also able to enjoy the poetry and the language more this time (:
going to stick with a 3 star rating, which i think is as high as ill go with memoir (other than in the dream house, which is kinda of different and doesn't count). to some extent, much of what i worried i didn't get on the first read was actually just kinda of boring/ cliche, ene though there was also a ton i appreciated much better.
audre lorde is based! please read this : )
Graphic: Abortion
Moderate: Child abuse, Xenophobia, Rape, Racism, Sexual violence, and Homophobia
waytoomanybooks's review
3.5
Please heed all the many, many content warnings I and others have tagged.
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Child abuse, Body shaming, Lesbophobia, Abortion, Death, Fatphobia, Bullying, Classism, Infidelity, Grief, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Suicide, Toxic friendship, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Ableism, Animal death, Child death, Homophobia, Death of parent, Sexual assault, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Self harm, Medical trauma, Suicidal thoughts, Mental illness, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual harassment, Rape, Sexual violence, Sexism, Sexual content, Violence, and Suicide attempt
addyruth17's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Abortion, Sexual content, and Suicide
Moderate: Death, Racism, Alcohol, Rape, and Lesbophobia
Minor: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug use, Animal death, Blood, Fatphobia, Racial slurs, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Sexism, and Toxic relationship