by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
8/20/2024, hardcover
SKU: 9780374603274
A bold, innovative biography that offers a new understanding of the life, work, and enduring impact of Audre Lorde.
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde's teachings on "the creative power of difference" may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today.
Lorde's understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Possibly the focus on Lorde's quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has led us to ignore her deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive--to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.
In Survival Is a Promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde's manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Her life and work become more than a sound bite; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on earth.
Reviews:
"[A] scintillating tour de force... in a free-ranging style as distinctive as its subject . . . Forgoing the strictures and linearity of traditional biography, Gumbs enlivens her narrative with unconventional flourishes that in lesser hands might feel like a gimmick but here come across as revelation... Gumbs is a master stylist with a knack for writing sentences at once direct and expansive ("The scale of the life of the poet is the scale of the universe"). This is a feast for the intellect--and the soul." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A celebration of a tireless advocate...Stars, hurricanes, and even whale songs feature in a narrative notable for lyrical prose and unabashed admiration...Gumbs offers thoughtful analyses of Lorde's poems, as well as the pressures and pleasures of her life: friends and lovers; marriage to a white gay man; motherhood; divorce; and recurring cancer... A defiant woman sensitively and incisively portrayed." -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[A] sublime biography...An inventive and thorough look into Lorde's work and life that illustrates how truly impactful [Lorde's] power was and continues to be...This is an elegant portrait of a revered and beloved icon." -- Booklist (starred review)
About the Author:
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the author of several works of poetry and of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Animals, which won a Whiting Writers' Award in 2022. In 2023, she won a Windham Campbell Prize for her poetry. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.