Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Summary: Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde is an account of Audre’s life as she grows up, struggling to understand issues of race, gender, and sexuality while detailing her experiences with friends and lovers who Lorde describes as the women who affected her most.

The first portion of Lorde’s text exploits the rhetorical device of euphemism. By describing things in more “polite” or less concrete terms, Lorde is able to encompass all of the bold details of her feelings without seeming to be off-puttingly blunt or ‘in-your-face’.

The first moment that suggests Lorde’s multiple gender identities is her use of an elaborate euphemism in her account of using her mother’s mortar and pestle. The first experience with the mortar and pestle that she describes reflects Lorde’s views on her own gender; in the prologue, she states, “I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father…” (7). This statement allows the reader to entertain the idea that in fact, the mortar and pestle encounter is completely sexual imagery. Furthering this idea, Lorde reflects on the power of euphemism; after confessing her confusion regarding “euphemisms of body”, Lorde states, “the sexual content of life was masked and cryptic, but attended in well-coded phrases” (32). By using these moments to frame the passage of text that describes Lorde’s interaction with the mortar and pestle, it is clear that this experience is a reflection of the character’s multiple gender identities.

In chapter 11, Lorde’s interaction with the mortar and pestle reflects her desire to encompass the “strongest and richest parts…of [her] father” (7). In talking about the pestle, she states, describes it as, “long and tapering, fashioned from the same mysterious rose-deep wood [as the mortar], and fitted into the hand almost casually, familiarly”(72). This is a euphemism for Lorde’s desire to have what she perceives is the best part of a man. The words “long and tapering” suggest the phallic comparison that is confirmed by the way the pestle makes her feel. It is significant that the pestle is “fashioned from the same mysterious rose-deep wood” as the mortar is because it highlights Lorde’s notion that she should be able to encompass the best of both man and female. There is no reason, since they are not made of the same material, that she should not be able to obtain both. This is reinforced by the way that the pestle fits “into the hand almost casually, familiarly”. This statement highlights the notion that it is not strange or unfamiliar for her to obtain the pestle, or in it’s non-euphemistic terms, a penis. Lorde suggests that the reason she desires the parts of a man is because it gives her a sense of security. She describes the pestle saying, “The heavy sturdiness of this useful wooden object always made me feel secure and somehow full…” (71-72). The presence of the pestle makes her feel “secure and somehow full” as if without it, she is anxious and incomplete.

Word Count: 510