Sometimes, Vassar invites academics and creatives to come give talks to the Vassar community. Other times, the Vassar community decides to bring scholars to itself.
Such was the case with a recent talk by writer and thinker Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of “Survival is a Promise: the Eternal Life of Audre Lorde.” Supported in tandem by the Africana Studies and Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies Departments, Gumbs came to Vassar last Wednesday to discuss her recent book, which Publishers Weekly named a Top Ten Book of the Year.
The talk was introduced by Dr. Diane Harriford, Vassar Professor of Sociology and Director of Africana Studies, who informed us that Dr. Gumbs was here at the request of a group of Vassar students who had become familiar with and connected to her work. Gumbs was then welcomed officially by students Harrison Brisbon-McKinnon ʼ‘26 and Marissa Desir ʼ‘25, who gave her an emphatic and reverent introduction.
Dr. Gumbs is a creative and an academic: On her website, she describes herself as a “Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist.” She writes in her web biography that her main aim as a creative and an academic is to “facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice.” She has won numerous awards for her writing and poetry, and her work as a North Carolina-based activist is expansive.
Through Gumbs’ 2020 book, “Undrowned,” Brisbon-McKinnon stated, “I learned how to refuse to naturalize domination,” praising aspects of Gumbs’ work concerning “the collective power of ecology.” This welcome was followed by a performance by UJIMA, a collective of Vassar poets and creatives of color. They performed “Rooted in Love: Reaching Towards Cosmic World-making,” featuring the words of Vassar students Desir, Nia Bethel-Brescia ʼ25, Alma Nájera ʼ25 and Shyasia Arnold ʼ26. Each performer read off their piece, delivering a stirring tribute to Mother Earth and a powerful invective against the destructive nature of capitalism and systemic racism.
As UJIMA recited their poem, I was sitting behind Gumbs, watching her as she watched these students. Gumbs turned around between stanzas, grinning widely and mouthing praises. When they chanted the group’s name in rhythmic timing—”U-J-I-M-A, UJIMA”—Gumbs danced along.
Finally, it is time: Gumbs takes the stage. She is a striking character, clad in snow boots and a blue patterned dress, sporting statement earrings and a shock of black-and-white hair. She began by giving thanks to her audience and inviting us all to take eight breaths with her. If her aim was to create a sense of spatial unity in Taylor Hall 102, it was a success.
She then expressed that she finds the act of making a dedication in moments like these spiritually important. She dedicated her time in the space to her 90-year-old grandmother, whom she described as a storyteller with a “round memory,” a Jamaican immigrant with a limitless imagination. She then invited us to make our own dedication, and share with someone sitting near us. I was sitting behind a professor of mine—she dedicated the time to her father, whom she thanks for allowing her to think expansively about care, as Lorde often invites us to do. I dedicated the time to my father as well, who is an avid storyteller and a source of creative inspiration and love for me.
Gumbs could have given this talk about any number of aspects of Audre Lorde after her many years of research and devotion to her work. She tells us that though the choice was difficult, she found herself compelled by a feature of Lorde that most are unaware of: She was obsessed with science fiction. Lorde is best known for her personal essays and poetry about Black queer womanhood and her experiences with cancer and disability, but she grew up a devout fan of the science fiction stories of such authors as Ray Bradbury and H. G. Wells.
Lorde’s childhood was not an easy one. Growing up in New York City, her family struggled financially, and her relationship with both of her parents was strained and complicated. She left home after graduating high school and did not return, even after her father’s death due to a stroke. The fight that escalated into Lorde leaving home, Gumbs recounted, began when Lorde started repetitively reciting a lengthy poem around the house. Though no one is sure which poem it was, Gumbs speculates that it may have been Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Renascence,” a poem foreshadowing Lorde’s interest in future worlds and potential challenges to humanity. Lorde started writing from a young age; she was first published in Seventeen when she was still in high school.
Lorde, according to Gumbs, was a self-described sci-fi superfan. In an era of nuclear warheads and industrialization that was Lorde’s childhood, sci-fi quickly established itself as a respected genre outside of pulp fiction and magazine clippings. She became enamored with Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles,” a series of stories recounting the fictional US effort to colonize Mars and displace the indigenous alien life after Earth suffers devastating nuclear war consequences.
For Lorde, sci-fi was more than a form of passive entertainment. She was captivated by the genre’s unique ability to “world-make,” an art form that looks forward toward what might lie ahead for humanity. Temporality is a recurrent theme across Lorde’s work—it only makes sense that she would connect deeply with something as reality-bending and imaginative as sci-fi. In the wake of her father’s death, she did not return home to seek comfort in the past. Instead, she turned to reading and writing about the future—to sci-fi.
Gumbs ended the talk with an activity she calls the “Audre Lorde Concordance.” First, she asked us to reflect and come up with what she called a “Lorde-ian question.” To Gumbs, a Lorde-ian question is related to the complicated aspects of life, its progressions and challenges. She believes we all carry around narratives related to our lives, about how things are for us internally and how they ought to be, in our goals and beliefs and values. A Lorde-ian question arises for Gumbs when “there is a part of your life that’s exceeding the story you have for it.” “You are outgrowing and having to let go of a story you used to have, Gumbs said, “She told us that often, the challenge lies in the fact that “you don’t have the new story yet.”
The Lorde-ian question invites you to ask, “What will the new story be?”
Earlier in the talk, Gumbs read us the poem “A Songless Lark” by Lorde. She invited members of the audience to introduce themselves and share their Lorde-ian question with the room and the letter of the alphabet the person associated with their question. She then read the audience member all the words from “A Songless Lark” that start with their letter, building miniature poems out of Lorde’s original work. For each question, she would read out the mini-poem and interpret it, creating a unique dialogue between speaker and audience.
What struck me most about Gumbs, other than her boundless charisma and Audre Lorde expertise, was her insistence on community-building. A typical book talk is an opportunity for an author to express and dissect their book for an audience. Gumbs was not only interested in providing insight into the life of Lorde, but also in creating a caring community where we were free to reflect, interpret and connect.