Survival Is a Promise

Starred review from June 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.

Starred review from July 15, 2024
A celebration of a tireless advocate. Gumbs, a queer Black feminist poet, pays homage to Audre Lorde (1934-1992), drawing on her subject's poetry, published prose, and the trove of archival sources--including journals and her own hair--that Lorde donated to Spelman College. Responding to Lorde's evocation of nature in her works, Gumbs describes her book as a "cosmic biography where the dynamics of the planet and the universe are never separate from the life of any being." Stars, hurricanes, and even whale songs feature in a narrative notable for lyrical prose and unabashed admiration. Disability shaped Lorde's childhood, notes the author. She didn't speak until she was 5, and she stuttered when she finally did speak; in addition, she was visually impaired. Her parents, Caribbean immigrants, were strict. Lorde recalled "constant and unpredictable punishment" but also her father's reverence for books, which nurtured her love for reading. She tested into the prestigious Hunter High School, where she found her first love; when she took her own life, Lorde was devastated. After graduating, although she won a scholarship, her family couldn't afford to pay tuition, so she worked her way through Hunter College, which was free, spent a year at the University of Mexico, and continued on to Columbia's School of Library Service. 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. Her most enduring relationship was with Black feminist scholar Gloria Joseph. The first Black faculty member in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Lorde subsequently taught poetry at Hunter College. Throughout a storied career, her commitment to Black feminist communities--and to speaking out against injustice, racism, and oppression--was unwavering. A defiant woman sensitively and incisively portrayed.

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Starred review from August 1, 2024
Early in this sublime biography of esteemed poet Audre Lorde, Gumbs, an award-winning poet turned biographer, conjures Lorde's "first funeral," the 1985 ceremony that commemorated the Audre Lorde Women's Poetry Center at Hunter College. As Gumbs describes this event rife with tributes, recollections, and praise, Lorde is present, bearing witness to "the power of her poetry, even in the mouths of others, to touch people and move them to action." What follows is an inventive and thorough look into Lorde's work and life that illustrates how truly impactful this power was and continues to be. We move through her early years of overcoming physical disability, to her coming-of-age as the defiant daughter of two hard-working Caribbean immigrants, to her development as the voice of and legacy for generations of Black, queer poets. Formatted "like a collection of poems that speak in chorus in all directions," Gumbs' chapters can be read piecemeal, each containing a richness of story and detail on its own. Gumbs never wavers in offering an in-depth and lyrical perspective into Lorde's remarkable life, going beyond the well-known sound bites and diving deeper and more holistically than previous biographies. This is an elegant portrait of a revered and beloved icon and an essential addition for library collections.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.