Audre Lorde introduces a new genre with “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” by using her gift as a story teller to bring together the juxtaposing genres: biography and mythology. Mythology, the study of myths, stems from ancient Greek etymology and as provided by the Myriam Webster dictionary, “earlier mythos, mythus, borrowed from Greek mŷthos “utterance, speech, discourse, tale, narrative, fiction, legend,” of obscure origin” (MWD). Lorde has defined herself as a multi-dimensional artist (warrior, poet, lesbian, feminist, etc.) and asserts this by overlaying mythological elements to the reality of her life. We see this in the way she describes women more so than anything else, and the power she credits to them merits further exploration.
In exploring the concept of “biomythology” I found Clarissa Pinkola Estés book “Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype” as a great source to unpack the subject. Estés spends an entire book breaking down the ways the female psyche has evolved over time and where the deeper meanings of female myths lead us. As she describes the journey, “my life and work as a Jungian analyst and cantadora, storyteller, have taught me that women’s flagging vitality can be restored by extensive “psychic-archeological” digs into the ruins of the female underworld. By these methods we are able to recover the ways of the natural instinctive psyche, and through the personification in the Wild Woman archetype we are able to discern the ways and means of woman’s deepest nature” (Estés, 3). As Estés notes, there is a connection between women, storytelling and psyche that seem to blend together as a lifeforce all its own. Lorde heavily credits the powerful female forces that played a hand in her development and as she writes, “it is the images of women, kind and cruel that lead me home” (Lorde, 3). It is in these images of women, and the personification of them, that I found both women working magic.
Lorde uses the example of her mother as source of unique strength and protection, we could also see her as shamanic. As Lorde describes her, “she knew about mixing oils for bruises and rashes, and about disposing of all toenail clippings and hair from the comb. About burning candles before All Souls Day to keep the soucoyants away, lest they suck the blood of her babies” (Lorde, 10). Her mother exhibits behavior we would associate with a witch or sorceress, such as potion-making and keeping monsters at bay. These are all strong and important manifestations of power for Lorde. There is healing and protection provided by her mother, no matter how sensationalized. Estés makes a similar declaration for her Wild Woman archetype as she writes, “the Wild Woman carries the bundles for healing; she carries everything a woman needs to be and know. She carries the medicine for all things. She carries stories and dreams and words and songs and signs and symbols. She is both vehicle and destination” (Estés, 12). The sentiment that the Wild Woman, which inhabits all women, carries a special and healing kind of energy, one that is pervasive in “Zami.” Lorde creates a character out of Linda beyond that of a working immigrant mother, which she could have easily done, and draws on her mother’s deep worldly knowledge. Linda carries the bundles of healing for her children and tries to pass them along to them. As Lorde writes, “she told us about plants that healed and about plants that drove you crazy, and none of it made much sense to us children because we had never seen any of them” (Lorde, 13). Her mother carries a torch of female intuition and knowledge that transcends time and place.
Audre Lorde could have just as easily wrote her biography as such, or even as a memoir, but instead chose to weave stories and elevate the evolution of her life. As Clarissa Pinkola Estés stated, “stories enable us to understand the need for and the ways to raise a submerged archetype” (Estés, 16). Lorde uses her own personal stories to raise a submerged archetype of which she had been molded by. Her hybridization of biography and mythology seems entirely necessary to tell the story of someone so deep and complex. Her conclusion in the prologue speaks to this as she writes, “woman forever. My body, a living representation of other life older longer wiser… Made in earth.” (Lorde, 7). In conclusion, Lorde, the Wild Woman, could not be explained in one genre and so she ingeniously created her own to share her story.
Discussion Questions:
- What examples of Lorde sensationalizing something mundane stood out most to you?
- How did Lorde’s portrayal of her mother change or complicate the way you viewed her childhood?
Work cited
Lorde, Audre. Zami: a New Spelling of My Name: a Biomythography. Crossing Press, 1982.
Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. New York: Ballantine Books, 1992.
“Dictionary by Merriam-Webster: America’s Most-Trusted Online Dictionary.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/.
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Hi there Samantha! I was so intrigued by your post and truly thought you took such a unique route in analyzing the text. I felt the inclusion of magic and myth was also quite crucial to the text, and found that it ultimately did hone in on Lorde’s mother. Even in the first chapter Lorde mentions, “I saw the root of my mother’s powers walking through the streets.” As she is visiting Grenada, Lorde is encompassed by the power of her foremothers as well as her mother and is overcome by their strength. Focusing on her mother becomes a theme throughout the text, and consistently comes back to the feelings of power and admiration. The inclusion of magic/power connecting to Lorde’s mother is pivotal to the text, and just as your response entails, proves to display how her mother “carries a torch of female intuition.” By focusing on her mother’s strength, Lorde ultimately proves that the warrior she has become in her lifetime comes from her mother’s influence. Including her mother in the text is so crucial because we as the reader can get a sense as to why Lorde is the way she is, and how she became so incredibly powerful and strong.
Hi Sam! 🙂
You have a dignified way of using your words to break down the content of Audre Lorde’s brilliance in her “biomythology” text. The act of storytelling emits a power of control and understanding about the content of the story told. Lorde’s “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name” did not shock me in which the intricacy in which Lorde expressed her life story, but the talent she owns in making readers feel encapsulated by the figurative language and speech. You point out how Lorde creates this text, with multiple references to power, as a new genre of storytelling and a biography. I loved reading about how Lorde’s mother tried to pave a path for her children by how she set examples for her children. “I only saw my mother cry twice” (19) is a strong line for me knowing how serious Lorde takes the topic of emotion and the erotic of life. Lorde alludes to the strength her mother possesses while shining light on how gender roles in parenting work and how parents are the role model for their children with every action that is accounted for. I admire bringing in another text to draw out Lorde’s genre further. Estés quotes made Lorde’s work more vivid, highlighting all the power womanhood entails. Great job!
Hey Samantha,
I loved your blogpost and I enjoyed how you emphasized Audre Lorde’s cunning ability to incorporate storytelling in her bibliography making it unique. In many indigenous culture’s story-telling was/is a way to communicate knowledge and history of the culture’s past. Story-telling is a form of interconnecting with one’s cultural roots. From personal experience my grandparents (from Mexico) would tell my brother and I stories of our ancestors and the history of the Aztec civilization; this was history passed down orally. As for Lorde, she is a spiritual woman that portrays her mother as a sorceress and one who knows of holistic remedies/treatments. Lorde focuses on her mother’s core existence, being a strong powerful black woman. There were two occasions Lorde saw her mother crying and she used imagery to depict the tears, “I touched the little drops of water on her high cheekbone in horror and amazement. The world was turning over. My mother was crying.” Even though her mother cried, it put a focus that her mother was still in tune with her emotions and humanity. Her mother was a worker, a mother, a healer, a full force of feminism. Lorde’s mother set high standards to become an accomplished and powerful woman.
Hey Sammi. Great blog post! I love that you brought up the novel, “Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype” by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. I’ve always had a special love in my heart for women. Before I even attended this class, my all-time favorite poet was Audre Lorde for she just always seems to epitomize these sentiments that I’ve shared for women my entire life. In a 1980 interview with Karla Hammond, Lorde states that, “While Black sisters don’t like to hear this, I would have to say that all Black women are lesbians because we were raised in the remnants of a basically matriarchal society no matter how oppressed we may have been by patriarchy”. Having been raised primarily surrounded by women, I always saw the sacrifices my mother made to support our family, the strength of my aunties who also helped to raise us, and the wisdom my grandmother bestowed upon all of her daughters and her daughters-daughters and so on. Sometimes we, as Black women, end up loving each other because sometimes only other Black women can truly see the beauty in our pain. Lorde’s portrayal of her mother and other powerful black woman in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name goes beyond the typical framework of black women’s place within society. Lorde speaks of her mother with great reverence and adoration when she states, “My mother was a very powerful woman. This was so in a time when that word-combination of woman and powerful was almost inexpressible in the white american common tongue… Therefore when I was growing up, a powerful woman equaled something else quite different from an ordinary woman, from simply “woman” (Lorde, 15). Lorde’s view on black women, especially her mother, and the divine feminne power that they possess can seem somewhat mythological.