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.