The child of immigrants, Lorde believes that her home is not in New York City, but rather in the country of her parents’ birth. In this way, creating a new spelling of her name is integral to her self-expression and her coming-of-age, cementing a position for herself within an openly-hostile society.Ĭrucial to this bildungsroman is the idea of home namely, the idea that home is a place that is intangible to the author. Indeed, even as a young adult, Lorde finds communication difficult she feels as though she can never truly express her thoughts and feelings, as though the expectations of other people always hold her back. Throughout her life, reading and writing became an increasingly important mode of self-expression. In this way, the title, Zami-the Carriacou name for women who work side-by-side as friends and lovers-substantiates Lorde’s identity in language, as language itself represents an integral aspect of the author’s identity.Īs a child, Lorde did not speak until she could read. Even though Lorde knows, from childhood, her predilection for women, she has no language with which to express her identity. Being a black lesbian, the author never feels like she belongs, both as a black woman in an overtly racist and misogynist America and living as a lesbian in an era prior to the word “lesbian”being regularly used. The book follows the exploration of her identity as a lesbian in the 1950s. Born to West Indian immigrants, Lorde grows up as a black child in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s.
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