SPECIAL EDITION
Bay Area readers on their most treasured books
Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, is the special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
One of my most treasured books is “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name,” by Audre Lorde. It was one of the first books that I saw myself in as an adult. “Zami” was Lorde’s autobiography, which she called a “biomythography,” a combination of history, biography and myth. In it, Lorde describes the unfolding of her life, with “Zami” being a Caricou term from her mother’s Caribbean home that refers to “women who work together as lovers and friends.” What struck me about this book when I read it nearly two decades ago was how she queered the lives of black women who depend on one another to survive, who love each other intimately, and who exist at the intersections of race, gender, class and sexuality. It is a raw and complex narrative about coming into one’s self, becoming more familiar and at ease with all of the parts of one’s self, and it is a powerful accounting of a black lesbian facing head-on her own adversities. “Zami” is a book that changed my life.