Zami
In her early childhood, Lorde describes her fondness of being close to her mother, sitting between her mother’s legs while her mother combed her hair: “I remember the warm mother smell caught between her legs, and the intimacy of our physical touching nestled inside of the anxiety/pain like a nutmeg nestled inside its covering of mace” (33). She proceeds to describe her fascination with another little girl when she was a child: “I wanted her for my very own—my very own what, I did not know—but for my very own self” (38). She even, “wanted to take off all of her clothes, and touch her live little brown body and make sure she was real” (40).
These events are not necessarily depicted in order to cement Lorde’s identity as a lesbian for later on in the novel; rather, these events are utilized to demonstrate the preponderance of women in her development as a person. Lorde dated a man for a portion of her teenagehood, but the way that intimacy was described there pales in comparison to the vivid descriptions of intimacy with women. In regard to her first sexual relationship with a man, she describes how “sex seemed pretty dismal and frightening and a little demeaning, but Peter said I’d get used to it” (104). On the other hand, the description of her first sexual relationship with a woman is rich with emotion: “Uncertainty and doubt rolled away from the mouth of my wanting like a great stone, and my unsureness dissolved in the directing heat of my own frank and finally open desire” (139). The intensely vivid descriptions of her passion for women highlights her preference.
The first time in the memoir that Lorde consciously is confronted by her sexual identity occurs when a character asks Lorde if she is gay. Lorde is caught off-guard, fumbling for a response: “I certainly couldn’t say I don’t know. Actually, I was at a loss as to what to say. I could not bring myself to deny what I had just this past summer decided to embrace; besides, to say no would be to admit being one of the squares. Yet, to say yes might commit me to proving it, like with the vodka” (135). After a moment’s hesitation, she chooses to say yes. This is the beginning of what would become a history of loving women.
Lorde’s memoir highlights the tangible impact of racial differences between queer people. She is acutely aware of how her gender, sexuality, and race all weave together to affect her life, though the specific degree of each is impossible to discern: “It was hard enough to be Black, to be Black and female, to be Black, female, and gay” (224).
Lorde reveals the falsity of queer color-blindness, understanding that even in the gay community, differences are not erased: “Being women together was not enough. We were different. Being gay-girls together was not enough. We were different. Being Black together was not enough. We were different. Being Black women together was not enough. We were different. Being Black dykes together was not enough. We were different” (226). Lorde observes how the queer community is a place that is “the very house of difference rather than the security of any one particular difference” (226). Queer people are united by being different, but that does not guarantee the unity of one particular difference. As a result, she says sarcastically, “Of course, gay people weren’t racists. After all, didn’t they know what it was like to be oppressed?” (180) She observes how the unity of the queer community was perpetuated by pretending not to observe racial difference. Some lesbians believed that they were all outsiders together, and the racial difference was therefore erased as a result, but Lorde names this intended erasure and renders it visible, and important: “That difference was real and important” (204).
One thematic element of this memoir is the importance and influence of community. Lorde conceptualizes her coming-of-age into adulthood as inextricable from her sexual identity: “I felt myself pass beyond childhood, a woman connecting with other women in an intricate, complex, and ever-widening network of exchanging strengths” (175). This community looks like a cohort of women coming together within the binds of patriarchy: “However imperfectly, we tried to build a community of sorts where we could, at the very least, survive within a world we correctly perceived to be hostile to us; we talked endlessly about how best to create that mutual support which twenty years later was being discussed in the women’s movement as a brand new concept. Lesbians were probably the only Black and white women in New York City I’m the fifties who were making any real attempt to communicate with each other” (179). This community also became non-monogamous for Lorde, and at one point, Lorde and her partner at the time, Muriel, allowed another woman to live with them: “For a while that summer, we had a vision and possibility of women living together collectively and sharing each other’s lives and work and love” (211).
The thread that weaves together the narrative of Audre Lorde’s life in this memoir—how she has chosen to make sense of her coming-of-age—is her relationships with women.
The plotline is propelled by each point of contact where Lorde meets a woman. After each encounter with a woman, the pace of the memoir accelerates. It is evident that Lorde’s relationships with women have played a fundamental role in her development: “Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me—so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins. Another meeting” (255). The women that shape who Lorde is can be traced on a metaphorical map in a web of connection.
The end of Lorde’s memoir does not end with a forever relationship. Unlike the ending of most classical heterosexual love stories where the man and woman get married and live “happily ever after,” Lorde’s memoir ends with a bang: a deeply heartfelt relationship with a brief lover, which is a relationship that does not last forever.
The memoir concludes with a meditation on ephemera and the transience of human experience. This ending is quite fitting since the story consistently depicted Lorde’s growth and change alongside other women. Lorde’s final lover of the memoir, Afrekete, left in an instant, leaving nothing behind: “We had come together like elements erupting into an electric storm, exchanging energy, sharing charge, brief and drenching. Then we parted, passed, reformed, reshaping ourselves the better for the exchange. I never saw Afrekete again, but her print remains upon my life with the resonance and power of an emotional tattoo” (253).
Although Afrekete left, there is no sadness in this ending: instead, Lorde understands the impact this person had on her, and how it shaped her for the better. This is reminiscent of Lorde’s attitude towards all of the women that she came into contact with throughout the memoir, and thematically represents the way that she understands herself in her memoir.
