Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name

As a writer, poet, feminist, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde has written about her emotional expressions and transferred those feelings in many of her publications. Lorde’s novel “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” (1982), is a fabricated piece of the authour’s own life. The book is summed up with snippets of memoirs, and incorporates incidents from the authors’ reality as well as fictional events which all happen to the main character. The reader journeys through the alternate life of Audre Lorde from when she had innocence as a child to when she embraced her difference as a woman. In this coming-of-age book, the main character grows up slowly revealing her sexual orientation to be different from most woman. Also, as a black woman, she faces trouble with her place in society. The main argument in surrounds the disadvantage of being a black lesbian woman in a “racist, patriarchal and …show more content…
The misrepresentation of expression shown through Linda’s character leaves Audre to think that life is easy and achievable but rather, the alienation her mother feels in society leaves a deep hole in Audre’s years to come. In one experience, Audre wanted to be class president (when she was seven), but her mother found the idea unsettling since she knew no one would vote for her, and although Linda was black, “she was quite light enough to pass for white”, though “her children weren’t” (Lorde, 17). The reality of being a different race ends with the failure of trying to accomplish what most can. As a child, Lorde grew up oblivious of what it meant to be coloured in America. Racism went unacknowledged in her family. Her feelings and her experiences of racial injustice were either ignored or condemned. Explaining this, Lorde