We will discuss Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde on 21st July. This is the second in a series of three texts on Feminism, to be followed by Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici (August 18th). Full details for that session to be added to the website ASAP. In June we discussed Lola Olufemi’s Feminism, Interrupted – Disrupting Power (click to catch up with free excerpts/audio-visual content).

Order the book from the Yellow Lighted Bookshop. Once you’ve ordered the book(s) you want, enter “StroudRadical” to the “Coupon Code” box at the checkout, click “Apply Coupon” – and the bill will be reduced by 10%. You can then either collect from Nailsworth, Tetbury or Chalford shops, or have the book(s) delivered by RoyalMail or the Bike Drop (£3.50 for delivery.

Audrew Lorde was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist. Zami is a “biomythography”, a term coined by Lorde that combines “biography” and “mythology”. As well as Lorde’s life, the book explores racism, lesbianism, mother-daughter relationships, and McCarthyism (accusations of treason related to Communism, named after the US Senator and the ‘red scare’ era of 1940s and 1950s America).

“A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem, weak and half-blind. On she stumbles – through teenage pain and loneliness, but then to happiness in friendship, work and sex, from Washington Heights to Mexico, always changing, always strong. This is Audre Lorde’s story. A rapturous, life-affirming autobiographical novel by the ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior poet’, it changed the literary landscape.”

– from the Penguin Classics edition

There is a 50 minute audio recording of Audre Lorde reading excerpts of the book and speaking about her life available on YouTube (at the link and embedded below).

Want to read more? You can read Lorde’s 1980 paper “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (pdf) at the link.