Bathroom Lines, Ky-Ky Girls, and Struggles

Abstract

In both Audre Lorde's biomythography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name and Joan Nestle's A Restricted Country, the authors explore, exploit and ignore the boundaries of autobiographical writing in order to tell their personal stories in the voices they choose. I find their accounts particularly useful when we consider them together because Lorde and Nestle were born, grew up and came of age within less than a decade of each other, in the same city, and cite many of the same landmarks as sites of recognition and worth. Yet because the authors remember, recite, and reclaim their personal histories from within their specific positions, we must examine the factors that shape their narratives insofar as they relate to the particular stories they choose to articulate; what they neglect to disclose may reveal as much as what they impart. The works of Lorde and Nestle suggest the possibility for a collective memory and for coalition building as supported and maintained by contributing identity politics.