Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythography by Audre Lorde

8 reviews

waytoomanybooks's review

adventurous challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

3.5

I’m so grateful that I was assigned this book in my Contemporary Queer Literature class. I have been meaning to read the works of Audre Lorde for a while, and I’m so glad I finally read Zami. It contains some of the most beautiful, thoughtful, challenging, descriptive prose I’ve ever read. It’s both deeply personal and deeply relatable in many aspects. Lorde leaves no stone unturned as she looks back at her life in the 30s, 40s, and 50s. We learn lessons right alongside her, and she is an excellent teacher and storyteller. This is an absolute must-read for anyone who wants to know more about queer history, Black history, feminism, and so much more. Her deep-dives into intersectionality are invaluable. You won’t be able to put this book down.

Please heed all the many, many content warnings I and others have tagged. 

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Content Warnings

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

earthbound_edits's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, Racism, Homophobia, Suicide, Death of parent, Suicide attempt, Abortion, and Grief

zombiezami's review

adventurous emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Racism, Sexual content, Self harm, Sexism, Animal death, Death, Child abuse, Alcohol, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Grief, Classism, Blood, Alcoholism, Lesbophobia, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Misogyny

Moderate: Bullying, Ableism, Drug use, Mental illness, Cursing, Fatphobia, Body shaming, Infidelity, Death of parent, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Forced institutionalization

Minor: Vomit, War, Trafficking, Cancer, and Slavery

Colorism

brnineworms's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is truly incredible. It’s beautifully written; raw, evocative, heartachingly sincere. Reading it, I felt like there was always something almost said – secrets just barely hidden behind a veil of metaphor, accessible only to those who know what to look for.
At times, the major themes of relationships, the self, and truth are explicitly highlighted, while at others they permeate the text almost – but not quite – unnoticed.

My only complaint (and even then it isn’t really a complaint) is that the book ends somewhat abruptly. I found myself yearning for a few more chapters. Still, I don’t think that’s enough to bring my rating down from its well-deserved five stars. If anything, it just goes to show how enthralling Lorde’s writing is.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Blood, Abortion, Death, Self harm, Child abuse, Racial slurs, Grief, Sexual content, and Violence

Moderate: Rape, Ableism, Alcohol, Child death, Infidelity, Sexual assault, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Animal death, Homophobia, Alcoholism, Death of parent, Lesbophobia, Pedophilia, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Cancer, Murder, Fatphobia, Trafficking, Genocide, Incest, Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Slavery, and Terminal illness

skudiklier's review against another edition

emotional funny inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Absolutely beautiful. I can't think of any nonfiction book I've highlighted/underlined so much in before. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time, and definitely want to read more of her work as soon as possible. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal death, Blood, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Racism, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Terminal illness

andreiaoh's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

5.0

theres something about the way Audre Lorde describes people through language that really brings them to life in my mind, full of expression and life. I know these women obviously exist(ed) but her descriptions really made me feel like I knew them personally.

this book is so rich. the way Audre Lorde writes is so full of sensation; the beautiful words made me feel as though all of my senses were engaged, from taste to sight to smell.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion

Moderate: Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, and Self harm

Minor: Sexual assault, Trafficking, Homophobia, Racism, Racial slurs, Physical abuse, and Death of parent

ceallaighsbooks's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abortion, Alcoholism, Animal death, Infidelity, Mental illness, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Blood and Racism

Be aware that the abortion scene is *extremely* graphic.

namizaela's review against another edition

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide