The Politics of Empowerment Working Group creates space for folks with interests in women of color feminisms and queer of color critique. We invite you to join us for our next reading group meeting, to discuss Alexis Pauline Gumbs' Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press, 2020).
From the publisher:
Undrowned is a book-length meditation for the entire human species, based on the submersive and transformative lessons of marine mammals. Alexis Pauline Gumbs has spent hundreds of hours watching our aquatic cousins. She has found them to be queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions humans have imposed on the ocean. Employing a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility, naturalist observation, and Black feminist insights, she translates their submerged wisdom to reveal what they might teach us. The result is a powerful work of creative nonfiction that produces not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wonder and questioning.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. She is the author of Dub: Finding Ceremony (Duke UP, 2020), M Archive: After the End of the World (Duke UP, 2018), and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (Duke UP, 2016).
To RSVP, contact the Politics of Empowerment Working Group leaders.