Transcript (Abridged): Earthly Reads: Alexis Pauline Gumbs on Survival Is a Promise /S1:5
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Ayana Young Hey For The Wild community. Ayana here, welcome to the fifth episode of our new book study series, Earthly Reads, where we'll learn alongside some of our most beloved authors. After listening to this shorter conversation, head over to forthewild.world/bookstudy to learn more and to purchase access to the full course. We'll be offering significantly more content and access to live recorded conversations with the authors on our website. We hope to see you there.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs We are part of a story of a planet that made herself by saying," I am going to hold." That is so revolutionary especially in relationship to some of the stories that I still hold in my head about being alone, about being separate, about not belonging—all of those stories that are part of the narrative that's in my head that comes out of my colonial socialization and education. It contradicts all of that in such a beautiful way.
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young, and today we are speaking with Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise. Well, Alexis, I am just so relieved that through snow and electrical outages and winds, and just life, that we've made it here together. My heart is feeling more and more settled every moment we're connected. So thank you for being here and spending some time with us today.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Oh for sure. Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. I'm really honored to be here.
Ayana Young I'm honored you're here, and I'm just I feel so grateful to have this time to be with you and sink into your book Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, and it's been out for a few months, and I know that it's really been moving people. And what's on the top of my mind, I guess, at the moment, is in so many ways, to me, this book defies expectations about what a biography should be. And I'm wondering how you approach this project through a lens of intimacy and care.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Yeah. You know, the way you said that really resonates, because I think that Audre Lorde experienced that herself, you know. She experienced exceeding and defying and deviating from expectations of who she should be, and maybe not always with so much wonder, curiosity and care when she was growing up. And so, I think of this work that I get to be involved in, you know, this intergenerational and ancestral work of listening and sharing and connecting as a form of finding ceremony. You know, like, what's the ceremony for Audrey Lorde's presence with us now? And, I take that very seriously. There's a point at which there's not really a separation between, maybe, like, what would baby Audre have needed and what does some part of each of us also need, in terms of being able to be held as we exceed and deviate from and don't conform to expectations that have been put on us? So, so, yeah, I think that that observation makes a lot of sense.
I mean...I ...You could also just say, I feel more loyal to the ongoing and eternal life of Audre Lorde itself as an energetic force than I do to any form, be it the biography, be it the podcast, whatever these forms are and the expectations that that adhere to them, they can change. You know, we're finding in all of it, the ceremonies that we need. So I do think that it's an act of care.
You know, just like some of the acts of care that I've received from my mentors, from my parents, people who've been like, Huh? We're not going to shove this child into this box and we're going to be curious about her. We're going to stay with her. We're going to see what forms actually support her in her life. That hasn't been my experience at every single encounter, every single part of my education, we could say, or every single institution that I've dealt with. But when it has been the case, it's taught me so much about what love and care is. And I want that. I want that for us. I want that for the little ones. I want that for our ancestors. And I think that part of the way that I learned how to relate to you with that kind of curiosity, care, and interest is also by the rigor of what it is to relate to our ancestors that way.
So, biography—it's just a clue. You know, it's just a clue that there really is a life there. There's life and there's writing—that's what biography means. But the ways that biography has been a box or it's been a way to kind of close down and try to have the last word about something. Or whatever it has been that this biography is not necessarily one thing. And then there's just always a question of what does our love require of us? And the love that I've received from Audre Lorde's life and her work, and the love that I feel and the love that I have it...That's the guide. And at every point in this process, including this point in this process, that's always my question. And I wouldn't say I'm always finding the perfect answer for it, but that's the journey I'm on. And that's what I'm listening for within myself. What is love asking of me, right now?
Ayana Young I feel so settled, like heavy, in this, like, exhale by your words. And as you were talking about ancestors, there is this eagle that literally just laid in the wind in the skies...You were talking, and I was like, What is going on!?
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Exactly!
Ayana Young Now that I'm stuttering, I'm going to go to a quote to help focus me. There's something you write, saying, quote, "My task is to follow Audre who studied the Earth and the universe closely from childhood through the end of her life, and to honor the fact that the scale of the life of the poet is the scale of the Universe," end quote. And yeah, some of the most specific parts of your book also feel like the parts that are the most universally relatable. And, I'm just wondering, how did you tune your writing to details like Audre's relationship to the earth that, yeah, that may have escaped more traditional biography categories?
Alexis Pauline Gumbs I love that you chose that quote. It is so my job to follow Audre, like in every way, in every way, in the writing of that project, but, just, I feel like that's part of my soul's purpose. And so, in Audre Lorde's poetry, she has all these beautiful details, right? And she writes constantly about Earth. I mean, just today, I was like, How many times has she used just the word 'mountain’? And it's like, so many times, you know, across her poetry, her work is geological. The way that she thought and the way that she expressed herself was so intimate with the processes and the characteristics of this planet, and it's something that almost could fade into the background.
But for me, the revelation of this stage of my job of following Audre was to say, "Wait a minute, that's not the background. That's the whole point." And there's a possibility of living that we could all have access to following Audre, if we were to say, "Oh, this planet was never a backdrop for our lives. It is our lives," right? That's the opportunity that Audre Lorde opens up with her poetry all the time, right?
So writing or creating a portable ceremony, which is how I think of it, for the eternal life of Audre Lorde to be something that, you know, you can hold in your hands or someone can listen to as an audio book or however it is that they access it. I thought about that practice that she had of lacing us through these details. And, what are the details that actually allow us to connect into what is possible for us in this relationship at this time. That's what I was thinking through.
And I mean, because the reality is as a follower of Audre Lorde, as somebody immersed in her archives, as someone with a great gift of being able to listen to stories about her from people who love her and were taught by her, I have so many details, like so many details, right? But I can't just transfer all of that to everybody on some kind of hard drive or something like that. I, then, have the task—which is the same task of the poet—to say, Okay, so out of all these details, it's almost like a divination or maybe like making a collage, or what's the detail? Knowing that the whole universe is in every single detail, like you said, which detail could we sit with now, right? You know, the eagle is laying in the air, and Audre Lorde said the wind is our teacher. She was so interested in the dynamics of air.
And, the reality is that one of the great miracles of my life is that I see Audre Lord everywhere. I see black feminist love everywhere in everything, and I love that about my life. But then, how can I share that experience? And in this portable ceremony called Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, it really was a practice of saying, Okay, Lightning, you know? Let's name something, and it's something that anybody who accesses the text has some kind of relationship to, right, through their own living. That will be the place that we'll meet each other, and Audre will be there.
It's a long book, but, you know, it could have been longer because I could do that all day, you know—which is why I'm also excited that I get to talk about it with you and, you know, be part of this beautiful work that For The Wild is doing. It's a tuning in, and it's a discernment and it's a choice, but in it, I also have the experience that whatever detail I choose, you know, wherever we go, wherever I look that thing that I would call Audre Lorde, but it really is a name for this old, old love that Earth is ringing with right now. It's there. Wherever I look, it's there.
Ayana Young Yeah, the Earth is not a backdrop is really…is really sticking with me. There's so much there and I love that throughout the book, you intersperse beautifully researched information about the Earth and her processes. Like, for instance, you write, quote, "Plumbed from the depths of Earth, graphite, aka plumbago, marks pages as the soft lead in pencils. It also tests the fate of the world in the heat resistant cores of nuclear reactors. Usually you have to mine graphite directly out of the ground, but with enough heat you could make it out of coal. Under chemical pressure, both coal and graphite will turn to diamond. Coal, graphite, diamonds—they're all forms of carbon, solid versions of the smaller part of any exhaled breath," end quote.
Oh, yeah. And I just want to hear from you a bit more about what drew your spirit to this sort of geologic storytelling?
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Yeah, thank you for reading that part, and thank you because it's like you're showing my own work back to me in a way that's really generative and generous. So it really is about our possible relationship with this body that is us, right? We call it Earth. And I mean, even that example that you gave is like, okay, graphite. What's graphite? And it could be like, graphite, it's this object. Graphite's this thing. It's outside of me. It's this thing. But what I know because this is the truth of Audre Lorde's life that she has offered, is that it's you, right? So how do we know that it's you? Well, you know, a pencil, right? Like you've used a pencil. Graphite is in your life. But also, once we get down to like what it is at the carbon level, it's here, right now, when you take a breath, right? Like that, we always have access to this relationship that is Earth. And, it's something that is so it's so real, it's just what is. However, I'll speak for myself. In my colonized education, I am actually robbed from that experience all the time, right? I'm taught to consider Earth to be a backdrop. I'm taught to consider minerals to be resources that are for exchange and to be exploited and extracted, right? I'm not to think about the fact that plumbago-graphite is a mineral. It's as connected to me as my breath, but that's the reality. And that's that's a relationship that Audre Lorde existed inside of and expressed and taught and made accessible to us with her work.
And I think that it's almost like I'm saying the same thing over and over again in the book, right, but just in these different specific forms because otherwise what happens? It's like the same thing happens on every scale. So, the graphite or the coal are just like these things, right? And then, like, Audre Lorde is just like extractable raw material, right? Audre Lorde's work is just like, Oh, well, what use do I put it to inside of this construct? And I'm saying like, it's not that. There's another relationship that we can have, and we're all—everybody that I know—survivors of this totalizing extractivist logic. And, we have the opportunity to unlearn that, and we have the opportunity to remember something.
Audre Lorde was interested in Marx. Marx would just call it alienation, right? I'm alienated from everything that makes up this planet inside the construct of capitalism in the dominant logic of the society that I live in. But in reality, I'm related to everything. I'm part of everything. There is no separation. And I'm finding the connection, finding the connection, finding the connection. So in that, too, I feel that I'm following Audre. She is talking about these things and, so, I have to understand them in a way that I can understand them. And, she was this type of person who would be, like, following that curiosity and that's a part of myself that I love, that I'm even growing my relationship to by following Audre. You know, like, what is graphite? What is graphite? What's my relationship to graphite? What is the possibility of graphite? What are the different destinies of graphite? And what does it mean when a Black woman poet writes in pencil about coal and says, "This is how I'm redefining Blackness inside the Black arts movement for Black people?" What does that mean?
And if I don't take for granted the elemental aspect of that—the fact that it's not just that she's talking about coal because she likes the sound of the word coal. She might. She's actually saying we are in every layer of this earth. We are in the depths of this earth. We are something that's complicated enough to have multiple destinies as a diamond, as a mark on a page as a breath.
If I could—and this is what I hope to do...You know, if I can be in relationship with these ancestors in such a way, this is part of the eternal life. This is part of the aliveness of Audre Lorde. Is that in my relationship with her work, I refuse for the process of transformation that she's in and that she ignites with her work to be over. It's not over. So I can't simply tell you something about it. I have to participate in it with you. That's the standard that I'm holding myself to in this work.
Ayana Young Yeah, what a standard. It's beautiful that you ask that of yourself, and I think gets us out of so many of the questions that stifle us and that pain us and that disconnect us. But the wonder! Like that's what I'm really I think, too, is the wonder, and I feel it in your voice and in your writing.
And there's another very wondrous quote that I wanted to read from you, and it's quote, "The core of the Earth is mostly iron. It has a relatively stable nucleus, and so when stars explode, a lot of iron stays iron. When this planet made herself out of stardust and gravity, it was iron that pulled her together around herself. 85% iron at the core of this world–our attraction to her is everything we know," end quote. I've never put those thoughts together, but I feel the words so true in my core and so, yeah, I just want to hear you speak more about this attraction and how it factors into your life and factored into Audre's as well.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs Yeah, you know, yeah. It comes back around to what you said about intimacy and care at the beginning, right? This is…And what you just said about curiosity—that it's not a curiosity that's like a colonial question to find the answer to now dominate the situation, right? It's a curiosity that is this opening to an intimate reality of being part of this transformation. This is what this planet is. This planet is part of a cosmic transformation and iron and gravity—like this is the experience that we're having, right?
And so, you know, like you were saying just now, it's mystical, right? So it holds in it this infinite possibility, right? And there's a vulnerability in that, right? I do think that's a form of intimacy—being open to the infinite possibility which is why I come back to Audre Lord saying, "Love is a word, another kind of open." That's what she says right before she goes into this idea of being Black because she comes from the earth's inside. And it is mystical, but at the same time it's like the other word you use, it's grounding, and it's grounded. You know, that passage that you just read, It's like...It's super mystical, but at the same time it really is my description of the scientific reality of iron and, like, iron's relationship to Earth and the weight of the elements relative to each other and what their role is in the cosmic process of a planet assembling itself. It is attraction, right?
And so, especially, guided by Audre Lorde, somebody who absolutely was in a lifelong study of the erotic—I can't name when it started and I can't name that it ever ended, you know? Absolutely attraction was something that she was curious about. She was making space for it. She was making expression for it. And it is, in fact, our relationship. We have a relationship, a gravitational relationship of attraction, that has us be part of this planet and it holds us. That relationship holds us in relationship. It's really, for me, it's a healing and beautiful image because I am remembering to embrace that reality of groundedness, of being part of Earth. And what there is, you know, on the other side of that is dissociation. You know, the dissociation that has been part of my coping mechanisms, the dissociation that happens when I'm triggered by acts of violence and oppression against my communities, against people that I love and against me, personally. But I am held and I am part of this planet. And this planet—we are part of a story of a planet that made herself by saying, "I am going to hold," and it's the weight of iron that is a core part of that process.
And so...I mean, Ayana, you know, this is why you live the way you live. But the reality is that I think that those who would imagine that we could be oppressed don't want us to know is every single thing, all of it, loves us. Iron loves me? Iron is like an embrace that I'm a part of? That is so revolutionary, especially in relationship to some of the stories that I still hold in my head about being alone, about being separate, about not belonging—all of those stories that are part of the narrative that's in my head that comes out of my colonial socialization and education, it contradicts all of that in such a beautiful way.
And so, it's like an origin story, you know? But it is also for me and I have to say this—this is part of following Audre. It's also for me being like reading all this stuff about iron and like the elements and the weight of the elements and, you know, what causes a planet? Like how all of these things that I'm curious about and I'm following my curiosity, emboldened by the curiosity of Audre Lorde, and this is the way that I can say it, you know. This is the way that I can say it, that I find the truth in it. But this is also the way that I can say it where I'm not just like, you know, listing some facts for you to now read those facts. It's like this is the way for me to say it that's part of the prayer, that's part of the prayer of return, that's possible for me in that knowledge, and it is a decolonial approach to what knowledge is and what knowledge is for.This idea of curiosity, it's the possibility of remembering our connection because, of course, everything's connected. But again, we're constantly in the experience of how and like, the wonder of, "Oh my gosh," you know, like, "I know that we're connected," but then the experience of it, right? It is an experience of wonder and it's an experience of reverence. And how can I remember that to be a part of this Earth is like, it's not just some like mundane thing that I'm getting through. It's like iron enveloping itself and becoming a p—...You know, like it's everything, and it's always accessible to me. I'm always having this experience of a relationship to gravity, even when I think that I'm just floating out here, unrelated and isolated.
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Jackson Kroopf Thank you for listening to the fourth episode of For The Wild, slow study series Earthly Reads. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. To get the full experience, join our book study, where we will gather with authors like Alexis, as well as adrienne maree brown, Tricia Hersey, Prentis Hemphill, Céline Semaan, and Marcia Bjornerud for an even deeper dive into their recent writings. To learn more, please visit forthewildworld/bookstudy, or join us on Patreon.
The music for this series is by Cool Maritime, Matt Baldwin, and Sharada Shashidhar and Caleb Buchanan from the compilation Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires.
For The Wild is made by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, Jackson Kroopf, Kailea Loften, Zandashé Brown, and Viva Wittman. Thanks for listening.
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Earthly Reads Book Study, I
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