Summary
Chapter 21
Lorde wrote that Mexico City was “a sea of strange sounds and smells and experiences that I swam into with daily delight” (154). She walked miles in the city, growing more and more comfortable and curious with each passing day. Everyone was kind to her and she was amazed at how good she felt seeing all of the brown faces around her. She went to the Alameda, a park, and read in the evening.
She had conversations in part-English, part-Spanish with locals, but longed for a friend with whom she could speak English. She looked up Freida Mathews and her young daughter Tammy. Freida was a friend of Rhea’s and she lived in Mexico City post-divorce. She was white, progressive, and smart, and was in her early forties. Tammy was twelve and loved having Lorde around.
Lorde fell in love with the neighborhood of Cuernavaca where they lived, and it took little urging to get her to move down to that area. She could commute to the District for classes, which she’d signed up for at the University City. She took a little house with a view of the mountains, and the hour-long trip over them in the morning to class seemed a small price to pay. She felt happy, like she was where she was supposed to be.
There was a whole community of single women of moderate means from California and New York living in the neighborhood. Some worked in shops, some were nurses or teachers, many were divorced, and all seemed to want to escape McCarthyism. The atmosphere there was one of alertness and suspicion of newcomers, but the women embraced Lorde as one of their own. They were older and more experienced than her, and Lorde never thought to wonder if they were gay—after all, “a large part of their existence was devoted to concealing that fact” (160), and Lorde hadn’t yet comprehended that gay women could be “progressive, comfortable, matronly, and over forty, with swimming pools, dyed hair, and young second husbands” (160).
Chapter 22
The most important person Lorde met in Cuernavaca was Eudora, one of her neighbors who called down to her when she was sunbathing one day. Eudora was gray-haired, forty-eight, from Texas, and elegant, with a direct manner. Lorde immediately knew she was gay, which was an unexpected surprise and a pleasant one. They laughed over the elusive clues for lesbianism and felt very comfortable with each other.
Lorde found Eudora the most fascinating woman she’d ever met. As she got to know her, she learned Eudora had been lovers with Karen, another woman in Cuernavaca, and that they had started a bookstore together but that things had gone sour between them when Eudora found out that she had cancer and had a mastectomy.
Lorde spent almost every afternoon or evening at Eudora’s place. They talked, read poetry, and played dirty-word Scrabble. There was still a reserve around Eudora, a sadness that seemingly could not be breached. But Lorde became more and more enamored of her and wanted to make love to her.
One night Lorde awkwardly said goodnight and went back to her house, but then returned. She could tell Eudora wanted her to, and Lorde told her frankly she wanted to sleep with her. Eudora welcomed her over and the two embraced, and went to bed together.
In the morning Lorde was a little nervous, but Eudora was the same as ever. Lorde admitted she did not like when women made love to her, and Eudora laughed and asked how she knew. Lorde realized she was much more experienced than she was.
Over the next month Lorde and Eudora spent a lot of time together. Lorde went to her classes, and then spent the evenings listening to Eudora’s stories of her fascinating and dramatic life. They drove around in her convertible and Eudora told her about Mexican culture and other ancient connections. She helped Lorde plan a trip south to Guatemala. Lorde started to wonder if she should stay here, but Eudora told her it was fine to come back to work, but one shouldn’t plan on staying for too long.
The other women in the neighborhood knew what was going on, and Frieda counseled her not to let them razz her; it was that Eudora was a good woman but a complicated one.
In 1954, things were changing slightly for the better. Senator McCarthy was censured, and the Supreme Court desegregated schools in Brown v. Board of Education. Lorde felt that decision in her very marrow; it felt like a private vindication. Being here in Mexico had already started her feeling like she had a bit of hope, and this was good news.
Eudora was becoming increasingly more difficult. She was an alcoholic, and would disappear for a few days and be sad and quiet when she returned. Lorde realized Eudora was not coming with her to Guatemala, though she secretly hoped she would. One night she erupted in fury at Karen, whom she accused of stealing her bookstore and ruining her life but still wanting her around whenever she felt like it. Eudora told Lorde to leave, to go on her trip. Lorde tried to hold her and tell her she could not go, but Eudora pushed her away and told her she could not just burst into someone’s private life. Lorde was shocked, but Eudora looked mournful and said she ought to go before it got worse. Lorde obeyed, though she was loath to do so, and told Eudora she’d be back in a few weeks. She felt a sense of determination to “stick with something that had passed between us, and not lose myself. And not lose myself” (175). It was in this moment as they embraced goodbye that she felt she was no longer in her childhood anymore, and was a “woman connecting with other women in an intricate, complex, and ever-widening network of exchanging strengths” (175).
When Lorde came back to Cuernavaca after her trip, Frieda told her Eudora had left to live in the District, but no one was sure exactly where. She kindly told Lorde not to worry, that Eudora would be fine. Lorde was screaming inside but kept herself together.
She returned to New York on a hot and humid July 4th.
Chapter 23
Lorde reflects on how “being young and Black and gay and lonely felt” (176), that there were “no mothers, no sisters, no heroes. We had to do it alone, like our sister Amazons” (176). In the Village in the 1950s she did not know very many Black women who were gay, and they often found each other sleeping with the same white women. They were "sister-outsiders," and did not often band together.
In the Village there was also a divide between the gay scene and the college crowd, which was rather hostile. Lorde made friends, though, such as Felicia, a Black lesbian whom she eventually saw as a sister. They’d even gone to the same Catholic school.
Oftentimes proper Black women would come down to the Village to find a “gay-girl” (178) to sleep with, but Lorde only met one once and was turned off by her. In the downtown gay bars she felt like a closeted student and in Hunter uptown she was a closeted lesbian.
She did have good friends, and there was a loose group of young lesbians that hung out together often. They tried to build a community where they could, discussing endlessly how to create mutual support.
Both Felicia and Lorde had the sense that people felt Black women just didn’t love other women. Her straight Black girlfriends usually pretended it was not happening or tolerated it as just another example of her craziness.
The most popular gay-girl bar in the Village was the Bagatelle, which Lorde went to every Wednesday night. She often left early because she had to write a paper, and felt that being Black meant that she was still an outsider at the club. When she mentioned her Blackness around other white lesbians, it always seemed to her like she violated some unspoken, “sacred bond of gayness” (181).
Over time she began to realize that the more she accepted her place as different from others, the more she felt comfortable with who she was. She did not need to be accepted, look femme, be straight, be proper. But still, “in this plastic, anti-human society in which we live, there have never been too many people buying fat Black girls born almost blind and ambidextrous, gay or straight” (181).
Lorde reflects on a diner she used to frequent when she moved to East Seventh Street. The owners were an old Jewish man named Sol and a Puerto Rican named Jimmy. Every day she would buy coffee and maybe an English muffin. For eight years they chatted and became friends, and it was hard for her to say goodbye to them when she moved away after she got her master’s in library science. She told them she had to move outside of the city because she had a fellowship for Negro students, and Sol raised his eyebrows and said he didn’t know she was “cullud” (183). Her friends thought this story was funny, and she thought about it a lot. She decided it was “how very difficult it is at times for people to see who or what they are looking at, particularly when they don’t want to. Or maybe it does take one to know one” (183).
Chapter 24
It seemed preordained that Lorde would meet Muriel. Ginger had told her about a “crazy kid named Mo” (183) who'd worked the X-ray machine a year before. She was white and Italian and wrote poetry, and Ginger implied she was also gay. During the time before they officially met, Muriel was undergoing shock treatment and Lorde was in Mexico.
One evening when she was back in New York, living with Rhea, Ginger called and said she had someone who wanted to meet her. It was Muriel, and they arranged to meet at Page Three. She was like no one Lorde had ever met before, with dark eyes and thick lashes, a flat face and thick dark hair in a bowl cut. She wore a black turtleneck and a beret and tiny gold earrings. She looked a little odd, but Lorde loved her contrasts.
They talked and talked, both of them realizing they had friends who died at young ages. They exchanged poems and agreed to meet again. Muriel loved coming to the gay bars in the city but the two of them felt like pretenders, “only appearing to be cool and hip and tough like all gay-girls were supposed to be” (187). The bars were sometimes raided by Feds looking for gay-girls with less than three pieces of feminine clothing, so the women there always made sure to have at least something that worked.
Lorde was still looking for work and was discouraged—she either had too much experience or not enough (meaning she did not type). She finally got a position in a hospital in the accounting department, though it turned out to be more of a girl-Friday position for Mrs. Goodrich, the woman who headed it. Mrs. Goodrich was overbearing and imposing; she had worked hard to get to this position, which women had never occupied, and was thus cold, rude, capricious, and exacting. She was cruel to Lorde, mocking her and making her do senseless tasks, and Lorde could not stand her. She “felt trapped and furious” (188) and desperately wanted to find a job she actually liked. Over time she began doing the bare minimum, taking naps, and inserting fragments of weird poetry into Mrs. Goodrich’s correspondence.
Muriel wrote Lorde fantastic, long letters that she cherished and read over and over again. Lorde longed to take care of her because she could not take care of herself. She sent Muriel scraps of poems, some of which were cryptic.
On New Year’s Eve Lorde was having a small party at the apartment (Rhea was out with her boyfriend). Muriel called and said she was coming up. Lorde was thrilled, and when Muriel arrived two hours later, the group turned on the radio to toast the New Year. They turned on music, told stories, and celebrated. Everyone decided to spend the night.
In the middle of the night, though, Rhea came home. She was disconsolate, as her boyfriend told her he was going to marry a nineteen-year-old. Lorde comforted her and kicked her friends out from Rhea’s bed so Rhea could sleep in it. In the morning she made everyone a large breakfast, hoping Muriel could see how competent she was. After all, she was pretending to be thirty-five, so she needed to be prepared for everything.
The women left, and after Rhea came out of her room and had coffee and talked with Muriel about Marxism, she left as well. Lorde and Muriel spent the afternoon making love. She felt like parts of her that had been closed off when Gennie died were opening again. The two of them felt like they had shared hurts and shared loneliness, and thus that they were made for each other.
The next day Lorde called Mrs. Goodrich and said she was sick and not coming in. Mrs. Goodrich immediately fired her.
Analysis
In these chapters Lorde continues to find herself—sexually, racially, creatively, and apart from her family. She becomes more assertive, looks for a supportive community, pursues what she wants, and allows herself to be happy. Not everything is easy, of course, as we will momentarily explore, but she is unapologetic about who she is and what she wants. As Barbara Dibernard writes, “In Zami we find an alternative model of female development as well as a new image of the poet and of female creativity. The image of the poet as Black lesbian encompasses continuity with a familial and herstorical past, community, strength, woman-bonding, rootedness in the world, and an ethic of care and responsibility. The image of a connected artist-self who is able to identify and draw on the strengths of women around her and before her is an important image for all of us to consider. What we learn may be as significant for our individual and collective survival as it has been for Audre Lorde.”
Lorde's experience in Mexico was a formative one. It was in stark contrast to what navigating the streets of New York was like—“Being noticed, and accepted without being known, gave me a social contour and surety as I moved through the city sightseeing, and I felt bold and adventurous and special” (154). She was glad to see “brown faces of every hue meeting mine, and seeing my own color reflected upon the streets in such great numbers was an affirmation for me that was brand-new and very exciting. I had never felt visible before, nor even known I lacked it” (156). And in a small but telling moment, she admitted it was here that “I started to break my life-long habit of looking down at my feet as I walked along the street” (156).
The experience with Eudora was also a formative one. Lorde was bold enough to pursue the older woman, telling her she wanted to sleep with her. She opened herself up to the exhilaration of being with someone a lot more experienced than her, and reveled in being totally open about her sexuality. When Eudora disintegrated into her alcoholism and depression and broke things off with Lorde, she was sad but recognized what this had all meant to her: “[I felt] a new determination to finish something I had begun, to stick with—what? A commitment my body had made?...To stick with something that had passed between us, and not lose myself. And not lose myself…I was hurt, but not lost. And in that moment, as in the first night when I held her, I felt myself pass beyond childhood, a woman connecting with other women in an intricate, complex, and ever-widening network of exchanging strengths” (175).
Another important woman for Lorde was Felicia, but not because they were lovers (in fact, they called themselves “sisters”). Felicia was practically the only other lesbian with whom Lorde could talk about being Black. The two of them knew that the Village lesbian scene did not want to deal with questions of race; when Lorde had the “bad taste” to bring it up, “I would get the feeling that I had in some way breached some sacred bond of gayness, a bond I always knew was not sufficient for me” (180-81). She wrote frankly of the various ways people tried to pigeonhole or control her, as she knew “in this plastic, anti-human society in which we live, there have never been too many people buying fat Black girls born almost blind and ambidextrous, gay or straight. Unattractive, too, or so the ads in Ebony or Jet seemed to tell me” (181). She tried not to care, and felt that when she let go of trying to be one thing or another she was more comfortable, but it did not mean that it was easy. For Lorde, “my relationship with [lesbians’] shared lives was different from theirs, and would be, gay or straight. The question of acceptance had a different weight for me” (181).
Anh Hua discusses this fragmentation of identity and Lorde’s response to it in her article on Zami: “Throughout her memoir Lorde unsettles the stability of home and home memories, realizing that each home may provide her with refuge, but it cannot fulfill all her multiple selves, needs, and differences. As a black lesbian woman she recognizes that she will always exist on the margins of each home or community. Existing outside patriarchal familial bonds and genealogy, Lorde realizes that women like herself must travel on their own through this lonely journey: ‘There were no mothers, no sisters, no heroes. We had to do it alone, like our sister Amazons, the riders on the loneliest outposts of the kingdom of Dahomey’… As she moves through each home or community, Lorde is disturbed by the effacement of her difference and the displacement and exile of her particular subjectivity in each community. The white feminist community discriminates against her because of her blackness; the black community exiles her because she is a lesbian; and the lesbian community effaces her difference as a black lesbian woman by essentializing lesbianism. The lesbian bars of the 1950s were not a safe haven for black lesbians like Lorde, but ‘a world only slightly less hostile than the outer world’… Negotiating and living within and between different communities, Lorde recognizes that her difference as a black lesbian woman cannot be ignored or erased.”
