Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Literary Elements

Autobiography

From 1930s to 1950s, predominantly in New York, but also in Mexico.

Audre Lorde is the narrator and the work is written from her point of view.

Tone: earnest, expectant, passionate, sympathetic, self-deprecating, pensive

Mood: determined, empowered, joyous, vivacious, exhausted, infuriated

It is not a novel, so there is no real protagonist, but one could of course consider Lorde herself the protagonist.

There are numerous conflicts within the novel, but one could say that it is Lorde trying to figure out who she is, trying to survive, trying to find home and love.

There isn't a distinct climax like there would be in a novel, and one could argue there are multiple climaxes depending on what one thinks the main thrust of the work is. For example, if it is the relationship between Lorde and her mother, the climax comes when Lorde finally sees herself as separate from her mother, and thus free.

1. Lorde foreshadows what will happen to Gennie through the latter's odd behavior and her promise to see Lorde next Friday; it is clear that she will NOT see her friend next Friday, and should not have let her go that night (95)
2. Lorde talking to Muriel about Gennie (about whom she rarely spoke) on the night Lorde and Muriel meet foreshadows how important Muriel would be in her life
3. When Muriel talked to Lorde about her sickness, "she was also warning me" (199), which foreshadows Muriel's breakdowns

1. Linda says of Philllip and Gennie, "That man call himself father was using that girl for I don't know what" (101) is an understatement for sexual abuse
2. "That was what being white and knowing how to type meant" (217) is ironic and an understatement, as Lorde is really referring to systemic racism and its deleterious effects on her life and livelihood

1. There are numerous allusions to the historical events of Lorde's lifetime: the Great Depression and the New Deal, WWII, communist hysteria in the 1950s, the execution of the Rosenbergs, Joseph McCarthy's witchhunts in the Senate, Brown v. Board of Education, etc.
2. Lorde's idea of rich people is that they are like Mr. Rochester from the Charlotte Bronte novel "Jane Eyre" (35)
3. The Sandman who Helen threatens Lorde with is a European folkloric figure, who put children to sleep and brought on dreams by putting sand in their eyes
4. Lorde quotes the Sarah Vaughan song "Harbor Lights" (98)
5. Crispus Attucks was a Black man who died in the 1770 Boston Massacre (124)
6. Lorde compares Keystone Electronics to the hell of Dante's "Inferno," a 14th century Italian text
7. Ginger's body is like the Venus of Willendorf, a prehistoric statue of a woman's fleshy, curvy body (136)

Much of the imagery in the work is of food, sex, bodies, and the city, which often amalgamate to provide potent images of eroticism and the formation of Lorde's identity.

1. Lorde writes that "Downtown in the gay bars I was a closet student and invisible Black. Uptown at Hunter I was a closet dyke and general intruder" (179). She is always both things at once, yet in different places she is only one of those things.
2. Lorde observes "In a paradoxical sense, once I accepted my position as different from the larger society as well as from an single sub-society—Black or gay—I felt I didn't have to try so hard" (181)

There is a parallel between the racism that Audre experiences and the way in which she is socially shunned due to her sexuality.

1. "Cuernavaca's sleepy streets" (159)
2. "...the downstairs pine-paneled recreation room was alive and pulsing" (241)