For instance, there were occasions when out in public white people would spit at her but her mother explained it away as people who were simply careless. Lorde also deftly differentiates her understanding of her environment as a child from what she knows now viewing it in retrospect. Seemingly everyday items such as this are elevated to near religious significance when understood within the context of a household because it's what ties this family to a particular lineage, culture and history. It's both a symbol of the Caribbean island her mother came from and a beautiful object which she attends to with an almost hypnotic intensity.

One of my favourite sections is about the West Indian pestle and mortar in her family kitchen. From descriptions of her glasses which frequently broke to a briefly known playmate we come to understand the world of her youth through the things she valued the most. There's so much powerful imagery from her childhood which brings this bygone era to life. By casting herself as a planetary body she shows how she is at once cognizant of her inherent greatness but also painfully aware of her distance from others. It has a persistent physical effect upon her as she describes: “I could feel bands of tension sweeping across my body back and forth, like lunar winds across the moon's face.” This is such a clever way of framing her mental and physical state in her early years. The depths of loneliness Lorde felt being so different from those around her is powerfully related in celestial terms: “I grew up feeling like an only planet, or some isolated world in a hostile, or at best, unfriendly, firmament.” This intense sense of alienation is carried forth as she is sensitive to the hostilities of other people's opinions and the ways they look down upon her. It also endearingly charts her progress towards becoming a great reader and writer. With evocative and emotive detail Lorde captures the difficult process of establishing an independent state of being within the circles of family, friends, lovers, community and country. She charts her journey towards being proudly “Black, female, gay and out of the closet” in a time and society with widespread racism, sexism and homophobia. We follow her piercing observations of the world around her being raised in Harlem through to her independence and early adulthood in the 1950s. It's a process of understanding and defining herself as separate from the ways in which she has been categorized by her circumstances and the way other people view her. “Zami” draws on much of Audre Lorde's autobiographical experience to form what she calls a “biomythography”. However, they can also attune us to the challenges some face because of a particular individual's identity or circumstances. Great coming of age tales are enthralling because we can all relate to the awkward transition from childhood to adulthood.

Zami by audre lorde