Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Audre starts public school in a special class for legally-blind children while her sisters go to a Catholic school and are constantly threatened with being transferred if they misbehave. Public school is notorious for being violent, whereas Catholic school is safe and orderly. Audre only begins talking once she learns how to read: “I don’t know if I didn’t talk earlier because I didn’t know how, or if I didn’t talk because I had nothing to say that I would be allowed to say without punishment” (21-22).

Audre credits a female librarian as being the person to teach her how to read. Lordewas in the library, throwing a tantrum, because she had not been allowed to go to story-time with her older sisters, and Mrs. Augusta Baker sat next to her and read her story after story. Audre was enamored by the books she could see with new eyeglasses and said she wanted to read. Her mother is ecstatic that Audre can speak and is intelligent, uncharacteristically scooping her up and kissing Audre affectionately in public.

Her mother sits with Audre at the table, teaching her the alphabet backwards and forwards, along with how to print her name, and even though Linda hadn’t “gone beyond the seventh grade, she had been in charge of teaching the first grade children their letters during her last year at Mr.