Zami by Audre Lorde (1982)

 This book feels a little 'dressed'. I wish it could have discarded this. The author's often sensuous, direct recording of experience is so striking and affecting. But sometimes she'll launch out from this brilliant space and head off into what I would call grandstanding, where the typical excesses brought about by Beat and associated movements of the mid twentieth century twist and snarl up that freeflow. Of course this would not be seen as snarling, rather as amazing poetic enhancement. Grrrrrrrr. But that part of this book, I can happily relate, is minor. Most of it is sumptuously rich with straightforward colour and feeling. Even when it discusses negative emotions or events, it tastes distinctive and is profuse with energy. It is an autobiography, tracing Lorde's life from first understanding in the 30s to the beginning of the 60s. She deals very honestly with family life in New York in the 30s and 40s, her younger self bewildered sometimes, angry sometimes, coming to terms with what it was to be a black girl in a world which felt strongly inimical, even inside her family unit. The weight of history is something to be thrown off in the case of constrictions from her mother (for example), or just felt, understood and fought in the case of the extra belabouredness of being black at that time. Her throwing off also included the realisation of her lesbianism, and a slow progress toward positive celebration of that fact, and, most importantly, a deep picturing of the delights of women, to her mind. In many ways it's a naked book, the aroused body is close by often, registering. The dressing spoken of at the beginning, for me, undercuts this exceptional plain-spokenness. And it exists even in the second subtitle - why should this be a biomythography? It's quite a simple book for almost all of its length, albeit a beautiful and major simplicity. But, despite these small niggles, it's a corker.