Dissertation Alexis Pauline Gumbs with abstract - DukeSpace

519 Pages·2010·2.53 MB·English

by  Alexis Gumbs

“We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996”
by
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Department of English
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:

___________________________
Maurice Wallace, Supervisor

___________________________
Karla Holloway

___________________________
Fred Moten

___________________________
Wahneema Lubiano

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of
English in the Graduate School
of Duke University

2010

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ABSTRACT

“We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996”

by
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Department of English
Duke University

Date:_______________________
Approved:
___________________________
Maurice Wallace, Supervisor

___________________________
Karla Holloway

___________________________
Fred Moten

___________________________
Wahneema Lubiano

An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of
English in the Graduate School
of Duke University

2010
Copyright by
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
2010
Abstract
“We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves”: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism
1968-1996 addresses the questions of mothering and survival from a queer, diasporic
literary perspective, arguing that the literary practices of Black feminists Audre Lorde,
June Jordan, Alexis De Veaux and Barbara Smith enable a counternarrative to a
neoliberal logic that criminalizes Black mothering and the survival of Black people
outside and after their utility to capital. Treating Audre Lorde and June Jordan as
primary theorists of mothering and survival, and Alexis De Veaux and Barbara Smith as
key literary historical figures in the queer manifestation of Black feminist modes of
literary production, this dissertation uses previously unavailable archival material, and
queer of color critique and critical Black diasporic theoretical approaches to create an
intergenerative reading practice. An intergenerative reading practice interrupts the
social reproduction of meaning and value across time, and places untimely literary
moments and products in poetic relationship to each other in order to reveal the
possibility of another meaning of life. Ultimately this dissertation functions as a sample
narrative towards the alternate meaning of life that the poetic breaks of Black feminist
literary production in the queer spaces of counter-cultural markets, classrooms,
autonomous publishing collectives make possible, concluding that mothering is indeed a
reflexive and queer way of reading the present in the service of a substantively different
future in which our outlawed love survives.

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Dedication
To my mother
Pauline Ann McKenzie-Day
always, always.

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Contents
Abstract..........................................................................................................................................iv

Acknowledgements...................................................................................................................viii

Prologue: To Those of Us Who Live at the Shoreline........................................................1
Introduction: Never Meant to Survive...............................................................................24

Chapter 1: Survival-An Intervention into Meaning……………………………………………………92
Chapter 2: The Ante-Essence of Black Mothering: Authority and Queer Danger...........184

“To Mother Ourselves”.......................................................................................................187

Black Mothers are Dangerous..........................................................................................193

Chapter 3: Teaching Us Questions: The Black Mutha…and the Transformation of
Discipline....................................................................................................................................262

Black Mother as Bad Teacher...........................................................................................262

The Problem of Language in a Reproductive State........................................................262

The Forced Poetics of Intergenerational Address........................................................266

The Urgency of Intergenerational Address in the Queer Time and Space of the
Classroom..........................................................................................................................272

Chapter 4: “Difficult Miracle”: Audre Lorde, June Jordan and the Forced Poetics of
Publishing in the Black Arts Market.......................................................................................323

June Jordan and the Difficult Miracle of Poetry in Time.............................................328

Poetry is (A Hungering For)..............................................................................................329

Chapter 5: Publishing and Survival: The Meanings of Production....................................422

The (Im)Possibility of Poetry...........................................................................................423

Kizzy: Rooted at the Shoreline.........................................................................................446

Our Bodies/Our Limits....................................................................................................454

To Survive: Barbara Smith and Alexis De Veaux........................................................466


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Needed to Last: Kitchen Table Sacrifices......................................................................466

Black Feminist Means: Of Production...........................................................................471
Forgotten Flamboyance: Alexis De Veaux …..………………………………….…484
Gaptooth Continuity………………………………………………………………....491
Survival Unbound: Blue Heat…………………………………………………….….493
Change Itself Changes………………………………………………..………………499
References…………….………………………………………………………………………..501
Biography………….…………………………………………………………………………...510

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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to you, all of my ancestors, for guiding my hands and my direction.
I am grateful to you, my family, for unconditionally loving me and kindly interpreting my
quirkiness as brilliance for decades. I am grateful to you, each member of my genius
dream team committee, for not only providing priceless advice, but also for living brave
lives so clearly worth emulating.
I don’t know if I could have written so many sincere words in any other US city
than Durham, North Carolina. I am grateful for you, my local community for showing
me the urgency and utility of what could have otherwise been merely self-indulgent
work. I am proud to participate in the transformation of the universe from the epicenter
that is Durham. I am also grateful for you, far-flung community; you lovingly received
and celebrated bits and pieces of this dissertation via facebook, tumblr and text-
messages.
This project probably would have taken the rest of my life without funding from
Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Martin Duberman Research Fellowship
from the New York Public Library, the Emory’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book
Library Dissertation Research Fellowship, Franklin Humanities Institute Dissertation
Research Award, Duke University Women’s Studies Race and Gender Award, the
Andrew Mellon Award in Humanistic Studies, the Duke Endowment Fellowship, and the
Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. Infinite thanks to the sacred work of the
archivists preserving and sharing the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive at the Schomburg
Library, the June Jordan Collection at the Schlesinger Library, the Audre Lorde
Collection at Spelman College, the Broadside Press, Lucille Clifton, Thulani Davis and

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Alice Walker Collections at the Emory Manuscript and Rare Book Library and the
amazing feminist periodical collection at the Sallie Bingham Archive at Duke University.
I am thankful for you, Cheryll Greene, for teaching me about the complicated
scene of Essence magazine and the bravery and brilliance of your friend Alexis De Veaux.
I am thankful for you, Alexis De Veaux, for being yourself and humoring me.
I am thankful for you, asha bandele, for teaching me about your mentor Audre
Lorde and living her integrity daily.
I am thankful for you, Farah Jasmine Griffin, for telling me about the Kitchen
Table Press Freedom Organizing Series and changing everything.
I am thankful for you, Monica Miller, for so gracefully showing me how it is done.
I am thankful for you, Steven Fullwood, my archivist soulmate for treasuring
exactly the evidence I need to be transformed by.
I am thankful for you, Lisa Moore, for being the queer survival of Black Feminism
in print.
I am thankful for you, Renita Weems, for stretching your memory on my behalf.
I am grateful for you, Mama Nia, for constant mentorship, love and faith.
I am grateful for you, Zachari Curtis and Ebony Golden, for growing embodied
shared creativity always and forever ashe.
I am grateful for you Cara Page, Aishah Simmons, Shirlette Ammons and Kai
Barrow for showing me how to treasure elders and honor ancestors with the grace of the
everyday.
I am grateful for you Uncle Keith for being such an open organic intellectual.
I am grateful for you Moya Bailey, Fallon Wilson, Elle Gray, Stacey Milbern, Rose
Simms, Adele Nieves, Noemi Martinez, Walidah Imarisha, Mai’a Williams, Nadia Abou-

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Karr, Sydette Harry, Susana Adame, Meagan Ortiz, Fabiola Sandoval, Aaminah
Hernandez, Jessica Johnson, Alexandria Wright and Kendra Tappin for being my sister-
comrades on this journey.
I am grateful for you Alisha Gaines, Uri McMillan, La Marr Bruce, C. Riley
Snorton, Ashon Crawley, Darnell Moore, Justin Smith, Sendolo Diaminah, Thaddeaus
Edwards, Thomas Justin Robinson, Kortney Zeigler, and Summer McDonald for being
my Black queer radical intellectual super-crew.
I am grateful for you, youth of Choosing Sides and Youth Noise Network for
keeping me accountable.
I am grateful for you UBUNTU for making it real compared to anything.
I am grateful for you Jurina Smith for teaching me so much about who I am and
who I can be.
I am grateful for you Julia Roxanne Wallace for welcoming me as exactly who I
want to be.

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