personal honesty and lack of pretentiousness shine through the writing. I came across Audre Lorde's Zami, and I cried to think how lucky I was to have found her. "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. It is a rapturous, life-affirming tale of independence, love, work, strength, sexuality and change, rich with poetry and fierce emotional power. On she stumbles through teenage hardships - suicide, abortion, hunger, a Christmas spent alone - until she emerges into happiness: an oasis of friendship in Washington Heights, an affair in a dirty factory in Connecticut, and, finally, a journey down to the heat of Mexico, discovering sex, tenderness, and suppers of hot tamales and cold milk. She trudges to public school along snowy sidewalks, and finds she is tongue-tied, legally blind, left behind by her older sisters. Around her, a heady swirl of passers-by, car horns, kerosene lamps, the stock market falling, fried bananas, tales of her parents' native Grenada. A little black girl opens her eyes in 1930s Harlem. If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.
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