Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

After Audre graduates from high school, she moves out of her parents’ house because her father makes disparaging remarks about Gennie and Audre fights with her sister, Helen. Audre works at a hospital and has an affair with a white boy named Peter. After moving out, Audre finds “other women who sustained me and from whom I learned other loving” (104), although she is upset that her family does not try to contact her.

She has sex with Peter and does not enjoy it, but everyone says she will get used to it. When she moves into her new apartment, her landlady’s brother sexually assaults her. At the beginning of college, she and Peter break up, and Audre is lonely throughout the autumn. She becomes so depressed that she stays in bed for days and loses her hospital job. She has to sell her typewriter and her blood to have enough money to live off of. After a lot of job searching, she gets a job as a doctor’s assistant and is able to buy back her typewriter. She walks along Coney Island boardwalk in winter and spends Christmas alone.

Peter calls and she sees him again; they make arrangements to go away New Year’s weekend to a furriers’ union camp.