Audre Lorde
Lorde was a Black woman, a poet, a lesbian, and a mother. As she depicts herself in Zami, she was a strong woman and credited the women who were around her for this strength. Lorde marched to the beat of her own drum, partly because it was just her nature and partly because she was isolated growing up. She was a woman who was constantly searching for something—for meaning, for home, for independence, for love, for truth. As she grew up, she embraced her sexuality and what it meant to be a woman who loved other women. She also came to terms with racism, something her mother tried to shield her from. She saw herself in all her identities—creator, lesbian, Black—without needing to separate them or have them war with each other.
Linda Lorde
Linda was Lorde's mother. A West Indian immigrant, she longed for her home and tried to preserve its traditions, especially with song and food, here in America. She had an imposing presence that caused others to be deferential to her, but Lorde intuits later that she was actually quite powerless in many respects. Strict and authoritative with her daughters, Linda often came across as unloving. She tried to shield her children from racism by pretending it didn't exist, which often led to tense situations. She worked hard and had a mutually supportive relationship with Lorde's father, and thus felt unmoored when he died. She did not acknowledge Lorde's lesbianism, though Lorde never came out to her.
Byron Lorde
Byron, Lorde's father, was distant and rarely connected with his children. While not cruel, he believed in discipline and order. He would involve himself in family matters only if he saw the girls disrespecting his wife or talking back.
Phyllis and Helen Lorde
Phyllis and Helen were Lorde's older sisters. They were very close to each other but made no effort to include their younger sister in anything that they did and consequently Lorde did not know them well. From them, though, Lorde learned that one could tell stories, which forever changed her creative outlook.
Genevieve
Genevieve was commonly known as Gennie, and was Lorde's closest friend in high school. She was one-of-a-kind, loud and assertive, intelligent, and prone to get into trouble. She trained in classical ballet and loved to dress up and act extravagantly. Her main source of pain was her family situation—she'd initially never known her father and when he came back into her life, she decided she wanted to live with him. When her mother refused, she attempted suicide. Though she seemed to improve and was able to live with her father after she recovered, he began sexually abusing her. Feeling like she had nowhere to turn, she again attempted suicide and was successful.
Maxine
Maxine was one of the first white girls with whom Audre became friendly, and was also a little bit of an outcast herself because she was Jewish. She was very shy and played the piano.
"The Branded"
Lorde's group of high-school girlfriends, "the Branded" were a "sisterhood of rebels" (81) who talked about poetry, sex, and politics. They did not talk about whiteness and Blackness, but Lorde herself did not have the language yet to do so. They "cherished [their] strangeness," were "proud of [their] outrageousness and [their] madness," "learned how to mock the straight set," and "learned that not feeling at all was worse than hurting" (82). The Branded included Lori, Judy, Martha, and others.
Ginger
Ginger was one of Lorde's closest friends in Stamford as well as her first female lover. She was Black, twenty-five, divorced, extremely loquacious, and ebullient. She believed Lorde was a sophisticated lesbian from the city and teased her about it often, but she was sexually interested in Lorde and made the first moves. Lorde was mesmerized by her body, which she described as like the Venus of Willendorf, "gorgeously fat, with an open knowledge about her body's movement that was delicate and precise" (136).
Bea
A friend of Lorde's friend Jill whom she runs into the day the Rosenbergs were executed. The two were very different, with Bea's family "old, mainline, white, and monied" (151). They also had little sexual chemistry, though they became lovers. Bea was "rosy-cheeked, with a rosebud mouth whose corners always pointed down" (151), and blonde hair and blue eyes. She was very depressed and determined to keep Lorde after Lorde broke up with her, and spent two days out in front of her apartment, waiting for her to come back.
Eudora
Lorde's friend and lover in Mexico. Eudora was an American living in Mexico, in love with Mexican culture and history and someone who "seemed always to have lived her life as if it were a story, a little grander than ordinary" (169). She was a lesbian, formerly involved with Karen, another American in Mexico, and the "most fascinating woman I had ever met" (162), according to Lorde. She was forty-eight, gray-haired, a journalist, brilliant, and an alcoholic. She also had breast cancer and lost a breast. Lorde felt there was a "reserve about her own person, a force-field around her that I did not know how to pass, a sadness surrounding her that I could not breach" (164-65). Over the course of Lorde's time in Mexico, Eudora became more encumbered by her alcoholism and her anger, but her role in Lorde's life remained positive and meaningful.
Muriel
Muriel was a former co-worker of Ginger's who invited Lorde out. She was twenty-three, Italian, had large eyes and a pale face and dark hair, and had been treated for schizophrenia before she met Lorde. Lorde remarked on her "great sweetness hidden, and a vulnerability which surpassed even my own," with a "sense of humor [that] was sudden and appealing" (186). She and Lorde were both dreamy poets, and both had friends who died young. Muriel had trouble getting her life together, and even though she and Lorde were happy for a time, she began mentally languishing. She could not get a job and began cheating on Lorde, and after they broke up seemed to have another mental breakdown.
Rhea
When Lorde returned to New York from Mexico she becomes roommates with Rhea. Rhea was a straight white woman involved in progressive, Marxist politics who put her role in that cadre at considerable risk by sharing a home with a Black lesbian. Because she wanted to keep her job, she relocated to Chicago, but did not tell Lorde the real reason. Rhea was a little jealous of Lorde's relationship with Muriel because her own relationships were such disasters that she was a little wistful when she witnessed a happy one.
Lynn
Bea's former girlfriend who came to live with Muriel and Lorde for a time. She was "broad, squat, and very sexy, and in terrible emotional shape" (211) after her husband was killed in car crash that almost took her life as well. She had nightmares often and was looking for a safe place. She and Lorde and Muriel were all lovers for a time and hoped to "practice the kind of sisterhood that we talked and dreamed about for the future" (211), but Lynn eventually tired of being the third wheel and left one day, taking the other girls' money.
Toni
A friend of Lorde's from high school whom she ran into in the Village. Toni was a successful nurse and was also a lesbian; she was fun and warm, big and brusque. She became close friends with Muriel and Lorde.
Afrekete, "Kitty"
A Black lesbian Lorde met at a party, and then again in the Village, with whom she had a mutually satisfying and meaningful love affair. Kitty had a "broad and smooth" (243) face, "smelled of soap and Jean Nate" (243), dressed well, and "her chocolate skin, sculptured mouth reminded me of a Benin bronze" (244). She was loving, bold, and sensual, and taught Lorde much about love. She was infused with Africa and the Caribbean, and "taught me roots" (250), Lorde wrote.
Ma-Liz
Linda Lorde's mother who lived in Carricou. In the stories Lorde heard of her, she admired the women's community that Ma-Liz was a part of.
Mrs. Augusta Baker
The kindly librarian who stoked Lorde's interest in reading.
Sister Mary of Perpetual Help
A cold and cruel nun who tyrannized over Lorde while she was in Catholic school. Lorde surmised she must have hated children.
Louisa
Gennie's "young, and pretty, and very reasonable" (90) mother, who "seemed very modern" (90). She had a very close relationship with Gennie and was opposed to her getting involved with her father.
Phillip Thompson
Gennie's father, who had a "charming wit" and was "a quick and bitter man of much wit and little love, who preyed upon whatever admiration he could find" (91). He began sexually abusing Gennie. It was also implied that he was abusive to his girlfriend, Ella.
Ella
Phillip's girlfriend. Lorde and Gennie thought she might be a little crazy, as she always sang a tuneless, violent little song as she swept, but as she grew older and wiser, Lorde revised her opinion: "And now I think the goddess was speaking through Ella also, but Ella was too beaten down and anesthetized by Phillip's brutality to believe in her own mouth" (251).
Peter
A white boy whom Lorde started dating after meeting him at a Labor Youth League Party; she does not devote any space to describing his personality. Peter soon lost interest in Lorde but occasionally reached out to her again; their last encounter resulted in her getting pregnant, though she did not tell him.
Miz Lewis
The Black ladies-room attendant at Hunter High School, she was there for Lorde when she was feeling sick after her abortion (though she did not know what was wrong with Lorde). She was kindly, warm, and generous, with a "broad short-waisted bosom" (114).
Marie
A girl on the fringes of the Branded, who was "short and round, with immense Mediterranean eyes shining out of a heart-shaped face" (120). She loved poetry like Lorde did. She did not want to go to college so she got a job after high school, and impetuously married a young man named Jim the same night she met him. Their relationship soured and she went to Detroit to live under the radar.
Jean
A friend of Gennie's who was a dancer, was "dark and beautiful" (89), and went to the High School of Music and Art. Lorde still spent time with her in the city after they graduated high school and Gennie died.
Cora
Gennie's young, brash, and hard-working mother who took care of Ginger and her four brothers.
Frieda Mathews
A friend of Rhea's who lived in Mexico with her daughter Tammy after her divorce. She was a "calm, intelligent, and forthright woman in her early forties" (157). She was very helpful and welcoming to Lorde, and introduced her to the community of American women expatriates living in Mexico City.
Felicia
A Black lesbian whom Lorde befriended when she moved to the Village after Mexico. Felicia had "the face of a spoiled nun, skinny and sharp-brown" (177), and she and Lorde became extremely close and decided they were sisters instead of just friends. Lorde actually knew her in Catholic school as a "tough little kid" and a "skinny little kid who made my life hell" (178). Lorde and Felicia bonded over their Blackness and how it made them isolated in the Village lesbian scene.
Sol and Jimmy
The two owners of a diner Lorde frequented while living in New York. Sol was Jewish and Jimmy was Puerto Rican. Lorde and the men "shot a lot of bull over that counter, and exchanged a lot of ideas and daily news" (183), and came to be friends. Lorde found it interesting, though, that they did not seem to know she was Black.
Mrs. Goodrich
The head of the accounting department at the hospital. She was "an overbearing and awe-inspiring woman," a "tartar," who had "won by the same terms as the men whom she had fought" (188). She was cruel and cold towards Lorde, constantly insulting her and making her time at the job miserable.
Nicky and Joan
Two white lesbians whom Lorde and Muriel befriended. Nicky was a writer and Joan a secretary. They "looked very proper and elegant in their straight clothes, and for that reason, and because they lived so far uptown, it felt like they lived a far more conventional life than we did" (217). Muriel and Joan eventually had an affair.
Jill
A friend of Lorde's from high school with whom she had unfinished business. They were both "poets, renegades, and very determined young women" (228) and thus had a lot in common, but they were "wary of each other" (228) as well. When Muriel and Jill slept together, it signaled the beginning of the end for Muriel and Lorde.
Dotti and Paulie
Two "skinny blonde artists" from the neighborhood whom Lorde and Muriel befriended.
