A Guardian and Lit Hub most anticipated book of 2024 Read these chapters like a collection
of poems that speak in chorus in all directions. Understand each word as an opportunity for
Audre's fierce love which is the same love that birthed the volcanoes and split the continents
to reach you wherever you are. Audre Lorde was a survivor: of childhood disability injustice
of her best friend's suicide of the atomic age. She was a college activist against nuclear
arms. A mother who knew poetry could help her children survive a racist world. And ultimately
a cancer survivor who understood the war going on within her cells was connected to the
struggle against oppression taking place all around her. This stunning new account of Lorde's
life and work illuminates how for Lorde survival was not simply about getting through or
about resilience. It was about how to live on and with a planet in transformation. Lorde's
commitment to justice was intimately connected to her deep engagement with the natural world
with the planetary dynamics of geology meteorology and biology. For Lorde ecological images
are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be on earth and how to live fully
as a Black feminist lesbian warrior poet. 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 Audre Lorde. Her life and work swell to become a cosmic force showing us the
grand possibility of life together on earth.
