WGSI Centenary Lecture 2024 – Book Launch: Survival is a Promise with Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Address
William Doo Auditorium, New College at 45 Willcocks Street, Toronto
Dates
Event start date : 11/13/2024
Event end date : 11/13/2024
Event start time : 04:00 PM
Event end time : 06:00 PM
Event Description
Women and Gender Studies Institute Centenary Lecture Series
Join the Women and Gender Studies Institute, Mark. S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies and Another Story Bookshop on Wednesday, November 13 at William Doo Auditorium from 4 - 6PM for the launch of Alexis Pauline Gumb's new book, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde.
RSVP Today!
Event Details:
ASL Interpretation provided.
The event will be followed with a book signing and reception.
Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Time: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Address: William Doo Auditorium (New College), 45 Willcocks Street, Toronto
About the book:
A bold, innovative biography that offers a newunderstanding 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.
About the Author
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.
Alexis’s most recent book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals won the 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction and she is a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize Winner in Poetry.
RSVP Today!
Join the Women and Gender Studies Institute, Mark. S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies and Another Story Bookshop on Wednesday, November 13 at William Doo Auditorium from 4 - 6PM for the launch of Alexis Pauline Gumb's new book, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde.
RSVP Today!
Event Details:
ASL Interpretation provided.
The event will be followed with a book signing and reception.
Date: Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Time: 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Address: William Doo Auditorium (New College), 45 Willcocks Street, Toronto
About the book:
A bold, innovative biography that offers a newunderstanding 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.
About the Author
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.
Alexis’s most recent book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals won the 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction and she is a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize Winner in Poetry.
RSVP Today!