Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Foundational Black-feminist memoir — the genre Lorde calls "biomythography."

"'Zami' — a Carriacou name for women who work together as friends and lovers." (Zami)

Major contribution to Black autobiographical-radical tradition — Harlem-Caribbean experience articulated from within.

"My mother, my mother — Carriacou woman, taken to Harlem, taken from the islands." (Zami)

Canonical lesbian-of-colour memoir; foundational to queer-theoretical canons of identity-formation.

"I have always wanted to be both man and woman, to incorporate the strongest and richest parts of my mother and father within / into me." (Zami)

Foundational for intersectional autobiography — the inseparability of race, gender, sexuality.

"There were no white women in my New York; we were all of us colored women in that bar, even the white ones." (Zami)

Caribbean-diasporic experience — the Grenadan inheritance as ontological resource.

"Grenada — the home that was never my home and was always my home — gave me names I had not known I needed." (Zami)

Mythopoeic register — the Carriacou-Grenadan mythological inheritance integrated into autobiographical-narrative.

"My mother bequeathed me names — Mawulisa, Yemoja — that I would only later understand were the names of survival." (Zami)