Publishers Weekly
★ 06/24/2024
This scintillating tour de force from poet Gumbs (Undrowned) traces the life of feminist poet Audre Lorde (1934–1992) in a free-ranging style as distinctive as its subject. Among other topics, Gumbs discusses Lorde’s upbringing in Harlem amid rampant police violence, her conflicted feelings about teaching literature to cops at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the 1970s, and her poetry’s exploration of the relationship between individuals and their environment. Highlighting formative figures in the poet’s life, Gumbs explores how the memory of Lorde’s first love, who killed herself when she and Lorde were teenagers, haunted Lorde’s writing for decades, and contends that psychologist Frances Clayton, Lorde’s long-term partner, brought a stabilizing influence to the poet’s personal life. 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. (A chapter comprised almost entirely of questions pondering how Lorde made sense of the racist children’s literature she read in her youth calls attention to the shortcomings of the archival record and imagination’s inescapable role in reconstructing history.) 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. Agent: Tanya McKinnon, McKinnon Literary. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
"[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)
"Gumbs, one of our great poets, has delivered not only a masterful biography of Audre Lorde but a revolution in what a biography can be. Whether you only know Lorde through her most famous quotes or if you’ve read everything she wrote a thousand times, there is something new and exciting here for you. Structurally playful, deeply researched, vibrantly felt, it’s a masterwork all around." —LitHub
"An award-winning poet, writer, feminist and activist in her own right, Gumbs is among the first researchers to delve into Lorde's manuscript archives. The resulting book highlights the late author's commitment to interrogating what it means to survive on this planet—and how Lorde's radical understanding of ecology can guide us today." —Erika Taylor, NPR
“Alexis Pauline Gumbs has been a kindred keeper of Audre Lorde’s lesbian-warrior-poet legacy for nearly two decades. This long overdue, and yet right-on-time biography of the Lorde caresses and transgresses the limits of genre, to care for all the women and girls that Audre Lorde ever was or hoped to be. Nobody tends to Black girls’ stories like Alexis P. Gumbs, who takes Black women deadly rigorously seriously. This book is a study in mastery of forms, with the kind of sacred irreverence that makes clear who the real geniuses always were. I read this book and could hear the Lorde saying, ‘and it was good.’” —Brittney Cooper, author of the New York Times bestseller Eloquent Rage
“Survival is a Promise is a lightning strike of a biography on The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. It is poetic in form, political in scope, and revelatory in understanding Lorde’s divine relationship to the Earth as an ecological thinker. Alexis Pauline Gumbs has created a community of poetic ancestors including June Jordan, Adrienne Rich, and Fannie Lou Harmer, now eternal sisters with whom she stands alongside in a circle of relationships. Gumbs describes the work of Audre Lorde as ‘a Black archive of buried photosynthesis.’ In her hands, it is pure light in the vitality of the struggle. This singular volume is a ‘force field of love’ full of prophetic dreaming animating not only what is possible but necessary. Power lives in this book. Chapter by stunning chapter, this spiritual biography made me want to be braver in voice and spirit.” —Terry Tempest Williams, Writer-in-Residence, Harvard Divinity School
“Only Alexis Pauline Gumbs could have written Audre Lorde’s life story in seven dimensions. She is Lorde’s spiritual daughter, and Survival is a Promise is no mere biography—it is a communion, an ancestral divination, a long intimate walk where history, poetry, politics, and wisdom are passed to a new generation.”—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
