Analyzing Zami: The Mother and the Motherland in the Formation of a Black, Queer, Female Identity Anonymous College

In Zami: A New Spelling of my Name by Audre Lorde, Lorde invents a new genre that she calls “biomythography,” a genre in which she can explore her experiences, emotions, and life-journey in a way that emphasizes emotions, eroticism, and the mythological. Through the development of this genre, Lorde presents reality and myth woven together in harmony, as opposed to being presented in a traditional Western binary. This allows Lorde to explore various relationships in her life in a unique way that rejects binary opposition and Western/colonial modes of thinking. Lorde’s complex relationship with her mother and her motherland, Carriacou, is crucial to the formation of her queer, Black, female identity.

Lorde’s relationship with Linda is strongly connected to Linda’s ties to Carriacou, the motherland; Lorde’s seemingly physical and erotic desires surrounding her mother represent a longing beyond physicality. Through her often rocky relationship with her mother, Lorde longs for emotional intimacy, female community, and home. Lorde’s mother was an immigrant from Carriacou, a place that Lorde had never been and could not find on a map until she “was twenty-six years old” (Lorde 14). Linda’s stories of Carriacou made Lorde imagine...