77 pages • 2 hours read
Audre LordeZami: A New Spelling of My Name
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1982A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 31-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 31 Summary
A friend named Gerridrives Audre and Muriel to parties sometimes. Audre describes the various attire and hairstyles seen as well as the food eaten at these parties. At one of the parties, Audre meets Kitty, whose full name is Afrekete. Kitty asks her about her name, and Audre reciprocates, then Kitty says she likes her hair and asks if Audre is a singer. Nervous, Audre suggests they dance. Audre admires Kitty’s dancing and her appearance. Audre prefers the slow fish—or the bump and grind—to actual dancing. Two years later, sans Muriel, while Audre is avoiding hanging out with couples, Kitty sees Audre in a bar. Kitty asks about Muriel, and Audre says they’ve broken up, then Kitty asks her to dance: “Dancing with her this time, I felt who I was and where my body was going, and that feeling was more important to me than any lead or follow” (245). They do a slow dance together, moving their matching belts to the side to get close. They loosen as they dance only with each other, and Kitty asks Audre back to her house for a drink. As they drive in Kitty’s car back to her house, Audre tries not to think, and the two don’t speak. Audre worries she has misread the signals, until Kitty asks her to spend the night. Audre tries to answer casually, wondering if Kitty can smell her nervousness.
By the time they get to Kitty’s apartment, Audre only wants her. Later, Audre marvels atKitty’s fish tank and abundance of green plants, and Afrekete introduces her to things from the West Indian markets under the bridge. They use fruit to make love to each other. They talked about loving women, and Afrekete mentions her daughter,who lives with her mother in Georgia. They talk about being black women and about how tough it has made them. Afrekete reminds Audre of Gennie’s stepmother, who would sing as she cleaned, and she recognizes the goddess in all black women, which she and Gennie were too arrogant and childish to see before. Afrekete lives on the top floor of her tall apartment building, and they have sex on the roof under the moonlight. Audre doesn’t see Afrekete for weeks and goes to her house but finds it locked. A week later, a bartender gives her a note from Afrekete that says she went to visit her daughter. Lorde says, “I never saw Afrekete again, but her print remains upon my life with the resonance and power of an emotional tattoo” (253).
Epilogue Summary
Lorde state, “Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me” (255). Audre finishes library school a year later and leaves her and Muriel’s old apartment. She reflects on the name Zami and remembers every black woman who has given her substance. She says that lesbianism comes from the mother’s blood.
Chapter 31-Epilogue Analysis
In Chapter 31, we get the conclusion of Audre’s coming-of-age, specifically through her characterization and relationship with Afrekete. In many ways, Afrekete is Muriel’s opposite, as she is a kind of life-giving goddess, which directly opposes Audre’s association of Muriel with death. Whereas Muriel only offers death and destruction of the natural, Afrekete offers life. This dichotomy can be seen in the presence of living things that surround Afrekete, such as her fish and plants, whereas Muriel was unable to care for the living things that surrounded her, including Audre and the kittens.
Similarly, while most of Muriel and Audre’s relationship takes place inside either the walls of their apartment or at various gay bars, much of Audre and Afrekete’s lovemaking takes place on the roof, under the stars and out in the open. This demonstrates the connection to nature and to externality that Audre finds with Afrekete, as opposed to Muriel, whose mental illness kept much of her pain and their relationship internalized. Afrekete represents Audre’s maturation as a character, especially in terms of female relationships, as she no longer uses her relationships to prevent her from being lonely, but rather sees the possibility for them to help her grow as a human being and be more comfortable with every aspect of her identity. With Afrekete, Audre does not feel the need to hide any aspect of who she is, and she shares much more about herself with Afrekete during the summer of their affair than she ever did with Muriel. In this way, although these chapters represent a kind of circularity in terms of Audre’s relationships with women, it is a circularity that also implies growth, a kind of upward spiral.
We also see this circularity in terms of the Epilogue which, in many ways, is a response to both the Introduction and the Preface. In the Introduction, Audre speaks about the psychic imprint her father has left behind on her, whereas in the Epilogue, Audre focuses only upon the imprints left behind by the women that she has loved. In this way, the differences between the two illustrates Audre’s growth as a character and the self-actualization of her identity.
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By Audre Lorde
