Zami: A New Spelling of my Name (Penguin Modern Classics)

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After finishing high school, Audre moves out of her parents’ home and begins an affair with a white boy named Peter. She does not enjoy their sexual relationship but sleeps with him because this is the normal thing to do. They break up after a few months, but soon afterward, Audre finds out that she is pregnant and undergoes a traumatic and painful abortion. Though the physical effects last only a few days, the poems she writes for some time afterward are dark and despairing in tone.

Once home was a long way off, a place I had never been to but knew out of my mother’s mouth. I only discovered its latitudes when Carriacou was no longer my home. I'm totally fascinated by the term Lorde coined, "biomythography" - I read here that she was quoted to have said biomythography "has the elements of biography and history of myth. In other words, it’s fiction built from many sources. This is one way of expanding our vision." Lorde wrote about being an outsider. To read her experiences today probably doesn't mean a lot to many readers because a lot has changed in the world since Lorde was young (at least on paper - I argue things haven't changed much at all except no one likes to talk about it openly). But I have always been an outsider in my own way, and I could relate to Lorde's story even though we have very little in common. She knew that you could be an individual but also to be made up of every person we have shared a piece of our history with, for better or worse.Lynn, a lesbian who lives with Muriel and Audre for a while and is their mutual lover during this time Lorde started a serious relationship with Muriel, a young Italian woman with a history of mental instability. The two of them were madly in love and moved in together, but eventually Muriel cheated on Lorde and mentally broke down. Lorde was devastated and found it difficult to extricate herself from the relationship, but finally the two of them separated. She did not think she would be able to be with anyone ever again, and was profoundly depressed. Eudora, an older woman and Audre's lover in Mexico. She was a journalist and alcoholic. She was passionate about Mexican culture and history. She had a clothing shop with her ex in the Mexican town where they lived. She had lost a breast due to cancer. Lesbianism – The book describes the way lesbians lived in New York City, Connecticut and Mexico during the 1950s through 1970s.

A woman in her late teens/early 20s being able to afford a one bedroom apartment in a major eastern city while earning a single working-class income (and being able to attend college for free), without being saddled with crippling debt, is a set of lived experiences that is literally unthinkable in the America of 2021. Each one of us had been starved for love for so long that we wanted to believe that love, once found, was all-powerful. We wanted to believe that it could give word to my inchoate pain and rages; that it could enable them to face the world and get a job; that it could free our writings, cure racism, end homophobia and adolescent acne.” Lorde did not return to New York City until she heard that her father had passed away. She soon decided to move to Mexico, a place that was full of allure, especially to someone who was outside society’s margins during the repressive 1950s. Her relationships, especially that with Muriel, made me think about myself a lot. I looked inward about how I feel, and the difficulties of that and the realities of it. I've read a lot about polyamory recently and have been wondering at it, for myself personally--the relationship with Muriel made me wonder about the difference between polyamory, open relationships, and lust alone which drives a monogamous relationship into the ground--communication seems to be an obvious key, consent, another--not only love. It's something I want to think on more, something to research. When Lorde returned to New York she roomed with a white progressive woman named Rhea. She took on a variety of jobs, but her race made it difficult to find something that inspired her or paid her fairly. She made friends and was part of the Greenwich Village lesbian scene, though she still felt like an outsider of sorts. She was in college throughout these years, knowing she had to get a degree or she would not have much of a future.

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Gennie, a.k.a. Genevieve, Audre's closest friend in high school who takes dance classes and commits suicide. The first person she consciously, truly loves. Sometimes we are blessed with being able to choose the time, and the arena, and the manner of our revolution, but more usually we must do battle where we are standing." She is right about so much, and so much of what she says we desperately need to hear in these broken and divided times.