"Zami: A New Spelling of My Name," Audre Lorde

"Zami: A New Spelling of My Name" was written by Audre Lorde, black lesbian feminist poet. Books written by 70s feminists are always discussed as Historical Artifacts, because 20 years later everyone has realized (come back to the realization?) that women are conniving bitches who will go any lengths in their quest to leech off the power of the Man, since they have none of their own. Still, I personally like the idea of sisterhood better than the idea that I was born into something akin to Highlander, only determined by social codes of decorum and attractiveness instead of swords, even if the idea of sisterhood is a lie. So I liked "Zami."

It's odd, anyway, because most of the book isn't a manifesto for sisterhood, it's about growing up in Manhattan (way up in Manhattan) and about growing up lesbian. It's all very romantic, in a good way, not in a "they gazed sadly at each other and then spent the rest of the book angsting about their inversion" way. The descriptions of 1940s/50s New York are very evocative and make me nostalgic for my own imagined past - mainly a past made up of stories my mother told me, not from my own experiences in New York.