Black Earth Podcast

‘How do we practice this revolution in a way that embodies the best of what we have as humans and the best of what we can observe in other species?’ - Marion

In Season 3 of Black Earth Podcast, we are meeting visionary black women who are creating innovations inspired by nature. 

Today we meet Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs from North Carolina, United States. Alexis is a queer black feminist, love evangelist and an aspirational favourite cousin to all living beings. 

They are also the author of numerous works including the incredible book, ‘Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals.’

In this inspiring and deeply moving episode, Alexis and I explore ways to uncolonise our humanity, our creativity and our relationships with more-than-human beings.

Timestamps
00:00 - Introducing Alexis
02:15 - Alexis’ relationship with nature
09:00 - Alexis reads the preface from their book ‘Undrowned: Black feminist lessons from marine mammals’
27:00 -  Alexis shares an example of black feminist lesson they learned from witnessing the harbour seal
37:15 - What we can learn from apes about mothering and care
43:50 - Why it’s important for black people to reconcile with other living beings and how decoloniality helps us
56:55 - Alexis’ advice on how to give ourselves radical permission to create 
01:06:00 - Alexis’ upcoming book on Audre Lorde
01:18:00 - How to support Alexis
01:20:00 How to support Black Earth podcast

How to support Alexis Pauline Gumbs

How to support and connect with Black Earth Podcast 
  • Subscribe to our podcast and leave a review wherever you listen to your favourite podcast
  • Connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn and Tiktok @blackearthpodcast.
  • For partnerships, sponsorship and media features, email us at blackearthpod@gmail.com

Creators & Guests

Host
Marion Atieno Osieyo
Creator and Host of Black Earth Podcast
Producer
Anesu Matanda Mambingo
Social Media and Marketing Lead

What is Black Earth Podcast ?

Black Earth is an interview podcast celebrating nature and black women leaders in the environmental movement. Join us for inspiring, informed and authentic conversations on how we can make a positive impact for people and nature worldwide.

Episodes out every Wednesday. Connect with us online @blackearthpodcast on Instagram, LinkedIn and Tiktok.

Hosted by Marion Atieno Osieyo. Healing our relationship with nature, one conversation at a time.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: [00:00:00] Welcome to Black Earth Podcast. I'm your host, Marion Atieno Osieyo. In season three of Black Earth Podcast, we're meeting visionary Black women who are creating innovations inspired by nature. In this episode, we meet Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Alexis is a queer Black feminist, a love evangelist, and an aspirational (favourite) cousin to all living beings.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: They're also the author of numerous works, including the incredible book, Undrowned: black feminist lessons from marine mammals.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: In this inspiring episode, Alexis and I explore ways that we can decolonize and reconcile our relationship with our more than human beings.[00:01:00]

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Hi, Alexis. Thank you so much for joining us today. And it's an honor, um, and deepest gratitude to have you here, um, at Black Earth Podcast. Um, could you please introduce yourself to our listener community? Sure.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I'm so honored to be with you. Thank you for inviting me. My name is Alexis Pauline Gumbs and I self identify as a queer, black, feminist, love evangelist, aspirational favorite cousin to all life.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And I live in Durham, North Carolina in the United States. I'm a person of many shorelines. My ancestors are from many different shorelines. And yes, I'm a writer. I am [00:02:00] a sharer of ceremonies and I am an auntie. And I am an eldest sister. That's a identity that's shaped me very much. And I'm, Honored to be with you.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you for sharing. Um, Alexis, how would you describe your relationship with nature?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: This is like, it's such a great question. You know, I, I, I think, um, of course, it's core to the whole premise of Black Earth. I see this manifestation, you know, like the, this embodiment as part of Earth. And really, it's been Audre Lorde's writing and her teachings that have really got me to this place where I try to [00:03:00] be specific in my language that, you know, I'm not with nature.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I'm not like on earth, you know, I am earth and I'm a manifestation of a create a creation process. Earth is one scale of it. And of course, the universe is, is a scale of it. And this body that I move around is a scale of it. But it's not separate, so that's. That's what I know. That's what I believe. And I'm also in a decolonizing process to actually have that be more apparent because I have grown up in, been educated inside of a system that says [00:04:00] that we're separate, that as a whole species, we're separate.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Even the word species is about separation, specification, and that as a human species, we are in a dominant relationship with our environment or this planet. And I think that that's really at our peril, and our core, I think, our core possible evolution at this time is to realize that Once we really get it, you know, once our collective actions really honor the fact that we have never been separate from any other manifestation of earth, then we will actually be able to be, you know, actually be able to be, you know, Who we [00:05:00] are and, um, and not have an extractive relationship, a polluting relationship, a profoundly unsustainable relationship to ourselves, which is what we have right now.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So, so, yeah, I guess I would say my relationship is.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It's simple in a particular sense, like we're Earth, I'm Earth, here we are, Earth, but it's complicated because I'm unlearning systems of and definitions of what it is to be human that completely contradict that reality.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you so much. Um, that deeply resonates with me as well. Um, a lot of my journey in the past few years has been unlearning.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, this world view that humans are separate from nature and [00:06:00] humans get to dominate nature. Um, it's, it's a profound, uh, process. Um, and I think has been greatly amplified because I get to spend more time. Observing, like, other living beings, observing how other mammals interact, or how plants evolve. And you're just like, wow, I can't believe I lived life thinking that there was something that was, you know, that I was superior to all of this, like, beauty and depth of life. Um, yeah.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: And also having to then function in a system requires you to participate in that worldview in order to continue. [00:07:00] Um, but yes, you're right. We are Earth. Uh, we are, we really are. Earth. That's as simple as it can get. , right?

Marion Atieno Osieyo: It isn't, that's it. That's . That's

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: the plot. , right? Spoiler.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Yeah.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: We're Earth. That's it. .

Marion Atieno Osieyo: It's no surprise ending. Yeah. No surprise ending. Um, and I'm, I'm excited for. The deeper work that I feel is happening as a collective around the world, um, because we, you know, we feel it on a deeper level, um, what is happening to the planet and I think the solutions are going deeper now beyond, uh, just kind of like actions, like material actions.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: It's going deeper to really. transforming our consciousness. Um, so whilst it saddens me, [00:08:00] there's also a hope, an active hope I'm holding on to. Obviously it's not everyone on this planet that's thinking that way, but enough of us are. Yeah. Enough of us are asking questions about this. Um, so thank you so much, um, for sharing that, um, undrowned.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Let's talk about Undrowned because Undrowned is it. Undrowned is it. Um, yeah, it blew my mind when I, when I came across Undrowned and yeah, I'm just, I'm so excited basically to talk about it.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, I wondered if we could start off, uh, our conversation about Undrowned with a reading from the book as a way of introducing the [00:09:00] book to, um, our community, if they haven't come across it already.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I would be honored. So I'll, I'll just read the preface. Which is basically like one page

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: preface a guide to undrowning

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: What is the scale of breathing you put your hand on your individual chest as it rises and falters all day? But is that the scale of breathing you share air and chemical exchange with everyone in the room? Everyone you pass by today is the scale of breathing within one species All animals participate in this exchange of release for continued life, but not without the plants.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: The plants, in their inverse process, release what we [00:10:00] need, take what we give, without being asked. And the planet, wrapped in ocean breathing, breathing into sky. What is the scale of breathing? You are part of it now. You are not alone. And if the scale of breathing is collective, beyond species and sentience, So is the impact of drowning, the massive drowning yet unfinished, where the distance of the ocean meant that people could become property, that life could be for sale.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I'm talking about the middle passage and everyone who drowned and everyone who continued breathing. But I'm troubling the distinction between the two. I am saying that those who survived in the underbellies of boats. under each other under unbreathable circumstances [00:11:00] are the undrowned and their breathing is not separate from the drowning of their kin and fellow captives.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Their breathing is not separate from the breathing of the ocean. Their breathing is not separate from the sharp exhale of hunted whales. They are kindred also. Their breathing did not make them individual survivors. It made a context. The context of undrowning

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: breathing and unbreathable circumstances is what we do every day in the chokehold of racial, gendered, ableist capitalism. We are still undrowning. And by we, I don't only mean people like myself, whose ancestors specifically survived the Middle Passage, because the scale of our [00:12:00] breathing is planetary. At the very least, are you still breathing?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: This is an offering towards our evolution, towards the possibility of life. That instead of continuing the trajectory of slavery, entrapment, separation, and domination, and making our atmosphere unbreathable, we might instead practice another way to breathe. I don't know what that will look like, but I do know that our marine mammal kindred are amazing at not drowning.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So I call on them as teachers, mentors, guides. And I call on you as breathing, kindred souls, may we evolve.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Alexis. That was [00:13:00] profound.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: When I first read, um, that preface, when I was reading your book, you put into words, questions I had been asking for years. Um, especially when it came to like the ocean, like, Um, I've been lucky enough to be on both sides of the Atlantic in, in Senegal and in, in Brazil and just staring out into this ocean and remembering the, the collective histories of [00:14:00] our blackness that is intertwined within that ocean and not having words to kind of just not being able to articulate it.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: And then reading that preface, I was like, wow. Alexis has just put into words everything that I've been trying to make sense of for years. Um, so I really want to kind of thank you for creating, creating this body of work. Um, what I know you've spoken about it before, but what led you to write this book?

Marion Atieno Osieyo: What was it that kind of said, it's time to really go in and create this? This, this body of work. Yeah. Well, I,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I mean, I really didn't, I really didn't think of it, you know, um, it wasn't my great idea. It was really my grief that led me to [00:15:00] deepen my attention to marine mammals. You know, I, I, um, was really overwhelmed by my grief.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I mean, there's layers of grief. My father passing away really opened me into this huge portal of grief. And my grief around his death from a preventable cancer, um, in the context of the non healthcare system of the United States, um, isn't separate from my grief at

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: the

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: captivity and brutality against my ancestors. It's not separate from the targeting and hunting and in some cases extinguishing and almost [00:16:00] extinguishing of whole species of other animals and plants who are also our kindred. And I just felt that, um, this breathing in the unbreathable was. My situation, but technically

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: marine mammals in general do that work of breathing in the unbreathable or being able to hold their breath and hold their context, you know, for so long. And so it just was intuitively, I was like, this is my, I need to know more, um, of how to do that myself. You know, like I need to understand that my breathing is [00:17:00] connected to multi species generations of breathing and, and really just also the humility of that, you know, the, the grace that I imagine

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: in terms of, you know, how seal moves and breeds, how, how a whale, how a dolphin moves and breathes. And,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: and it wasn't, I didn't know that I would share any of that with anyone. Like, I really was doing it for me. And it was just like a particular form of communion, what I really wanted was communion. And then I bumped up also against, as I was doing all this research, you know, I'm a black feminist researcher.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And so I'm great at finding sources. But I'm also always [00:18:00] bring that black feminist critical lens that our our four mother black feminists have exemplified. And I was just really angered, actually, by how clearly colonialist, um, the language that I had to sift through to just try to follow my wonder. You know, like, I just wonder.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I wonder what breathing is like for a seal. I wonder what, um, I wonder what giving birth is like for a whale. You know, I wonder these things. And I know that I'm in kinship relationships with the scientists who wonder about those things and have, like, spent all this time on boats, you know, like you, and who have, um, [00:19:00] prioritized being able to be with other species and observe them, but then they've been Educated in a colonial way like I have been right to write about and express this in a way that really reproduces these forms of separation and systems of oppression and colonization that I rage against in my own body intergenerationally.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So, so then I started to say, okay, I have to, there's actually a lot of work I have to do in order to follow my wonder. In a way that is generative of wonder and not complicit with or assenting to the forms of extraction, entrapment, and ideological violence that are, in fact, the normative language of [00:20:00] interspecies observation.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So, and again, still I was doing that for me. I wasn't doing that to be like, You know, I will exemplify the new science writing for the next generations, you know, I was just doing it because I was like, I don't want this to be in the way. And also that there was a lot of clarification about my rage and my grief in some of those language choices and in that, um, in that contradiction that I was experiencing.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And so, but I, I just kept researching, I kept writing every day. A lot of what I wrote was just really, uh, expressive of my anger about the situation. And then I found for myself a way to actually, in writing, honor the wonder, [00:21:00] the openness. Really be able to receive the beautiful destabilization, you know, like the, the real way that my wonder about other beings can make me wonder about myself and not know myself in ways that I, that I thought were stable.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: There's something about that, um, that once I felt that, I remember that the first piece that I wrote where I felt that, which was about the hooded seal. And it was then that I was like, oh, but I think maybe I should share this. I didn't necessarily want to share like all my rage and all my critique and all my disappointment, you know.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Um, but I was like, no, but this, this is something that this is a [00:22:00] form of love. You know, this is a form of interspecies love and I don't think it's only for me. And I, I still didn't think I was writing a book. I just. decided to post on like Facebook. And um, and then I, and then that became part of my daily practice.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And then it was other people who said it should be a book. So I just, I just always say that it, it's not, um, it's not really my great idea. You know, that Undrowned exists as a book. It really is my community's request that these kind of daily offerings be collected in the way they wanted them. They wanted to be able to hold it.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And so then I had to think about, okay, well, what is this collectively? And, and I was like, they're lessons. They're lessons from marine mammals. They're black feminist lessons because they're channeled through that. History and that lens of understanding and [00:23:00] which of them fit with, you know, like, what is the lesson?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: The lessons take care of your blessings. The lesson is respect your hair. The lesson is breathe, listen, you know, like what, what are the lessons? And that was a discernment process for me in, yeah, in obedience really to my community's desire for process that really for me was a meditation to become something that could be a shared ceremony.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So it could be part of your meditation, right? It could be part of other people's process. And I feel really honored by that request. And I do, I do believe that. I do believe that when we really are rigorous about what we need, like for our own soul's journey to move past where we are or where we, where we need to be, that we will find [00:24:00] things there that can be of service to our communities.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And, and we will, if we pay attention, be able to notice our community's collaboration in that. requests and, um, yeah. And so I guess I describe that in such depth because I think even that is part of me unlearning a colonial dominating relationship to, to writing or to my own voice, you know, to say like, Hey, I'm an expert in something.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I'm going to tell people I'm going to intervene and this will make things better. You know, like that. I'm not saying that that's not ever true. You know, there's no, there's no place for that. But I do think that.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: That's not the only way to be and for me, the process of bringing undrowned into this form is really a [00:25:00] practice of surrender, not a practice of, of clarity, of intentional, of, you know, um,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: yeah, of trying to make something happen that I thought was a great idea. It, it, it wasn't that at all. It was continuing to say yes to this. wonder and the possible relationship, possible relationship when we continue to wonder.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Wow. Thank you so much for, for sharing that. Um, I do believe creativity is, uh, one long practice of surrender.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, and I also believe that ideas have consciousness, that they exist outside of us and they're looking for channels to express themselves. [00:26:00] Um, I know this sounds so crazy, but, but, you know, I think there could be multiple people around the world who, who maybe have thought of Black Earth, for example.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Right. Um, and for some reason, Uh, time and circumstances and perhaps a personal evolution within myself found me ready to be able to be a channel of expression for this idea. But I believe that ideas exist outside of us and they're looking for ways to, to express themselves. Um, and so the, the practice of creation is not in controlling, but in surrendering to that idea expressing itself.[00:27:00]

Marion Atieno Osieyo: I wondered, um, if you could share with us an example of a black feminist lesson that you learned from witnessing our marine siblings. Um, maybe one that resonates with where you are in your life right now with just anyone. Oh,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: yeah. I mean, there's, there's so many. I think one that, one that really, well, rises to the surface is like, it's a literal thing because I'm, I'm thinking about, um, the harbor seal and [00:28:00] the harbor seal, like actually of all the mammals that I wrote about in undrowned.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: The harbor seal is actually the mammal that I spent the most actual time with during that, during that season. And it wasn't really because I was like, I gotta find, gotta hang out with some harbor seals, even though I do, I do. They're some of the most abundant seals on the planet. I do admire, um, how they've regenerated their community.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I'm, I'm definitely curious about them, but it seemed like they're curious about me too. Like they would like show up. And so, um, so I'm thinking about, And that's what they would literally do. They would rise to the surface and be like, boom, here's a, here's a harbor seal. And one of the amazing things about harbor seals, and every seal has their own version of this, right?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: But, [00:29:00] um, one of the things that was really remarkable for me to learn was how variable their heart rate is and how they slow their heart down so much, um, when they dive under the water. And I just, you know, I mean, I identify with seals in a lot of ways. I feel like harbor seal lives basically half their life underwater and half their life above water.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: They can be on the land, they can be in the water, they, you know, they have, they have that, um, versatility and, you know, I was alluding to a little bit before as a shoreline person, I really and as a queer Black feminist and as, you know, everyone who I [00:30:00] am, I really identify with that between worlds, multiple worlds reality.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I do feel like I too have had to cultivate technologies for breathing in different worlds and really trying to hold some integrity within those differences between the worlds that I navigate. And so,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: so the fact that the Harbor Seal, one of the ways that the Harbor Seal. does this so gracefully is to slow their heart when they need to, and also race their heart when they need to. It's like, oh my gosh, it really is teaching me to be a [00:31:00] student of my heart and my actual heart rate. And also just everything about like, what is going on.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: With my pulse, like with, with my heart in the literal sense, though, of course, it's, it's not removed from my heart in the, you know, the metaphorical sense and all the love and all the feelings. And so, you know, I think it's, I think it's the seals, like the seals right now in my life. It's like, okay, so harbor seal, this heart rate thing, thinking about like the Weddell seal, the Weddell seals, they, they live like mostly in like ice environments.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: They like find the hole they made, you know, like they find this tiny hole they made in the ice to come back to, to be able to breathe. Like they [00:32:00] remember, they actually in advance make a way of return for themselves. I think that's something I need to remember as a person who lives in multiple worlds.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Really like

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: that form of time travel of being kind to my future self. And then remembering what I made. There's um,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: yeah, there's so much. There's so much. There's like,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: you know, some seals have this like delayed conception where they, you know, whatever the implantation of the sperm is. They don't actually have to allow it to go anywhere in the [00:33:00] process of like, creating a new seal until they want it to like, it could be like months and years until they're like, actually now I'm in a situation where I want to bring this.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And I think about that in terms of my creative process, you know, as a creator, like what, just because this idea came at a particular moment, doesn't mean that now is the time to develop it, bring it into fruition. It could be that I'm actually watching for the circumstances. that honor this particular idea.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: All of these things. I mean, really it could be a whole SEAL school. Um, but I think that especially right now, um, as you know, but your listeners may not know, um, I had just finished writing this like physically [00:34:00] Audre Lorde, which is also like emotionally huge because Audre Lorde, the great Black feminist, socialist warrior poet.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Has been such a major influence on my life and, um, and publishing this biography has been, um, it's been a shift in scale for me because it's published with like a big corporate publisher and it's, you know, it's coming out in the U. S. and the U. K. at the same time, which is soon, which is like August 20th.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And that is a threshold to a different world for me. You know, thinking about what happens with what I create when it actually goes into like this whole machine of publicity and, um, what happens, what level of faith does it take to let go and understand [00:35:00] that different people will hold the work different ways?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Um, what does it mean to pay attention? To what my heart is saying in order to move through into worlds that are unfamiliar to me with integrity and to remember my own passageway. Right? Which, I mean, maybe I made for myself, but also Audre Lorde made for me in terms of returning, in terms of breathability.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Um, yeah. So obviously there's a lot, there's like spirals in that because it's something that I'm thinking about right now, but, but there's, there's always things like that. Right? And so I, I think that as you have said, when we have the opportunity to reflect, And notice life being itself, but especially across, you know, like, especially [00:36:00] interfacing with forms of life that we, that we have enough space and difference from that we can still be really curious about how it is that they live.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It gives us this opportunity to be curious about how we're living, you know, and to really look at it. with a different lens, not a lens of expertise, not a lens of like, I got to depend on whatever my coping mechanisms have been, but really to say, okay, there's another possibility. How am I relating to my breath?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: How could I study my heart? What hole in the ice did I make for myself? You know, like just all of those things. What, what is the [00:37:00] timing and, um, intentionality and Grace that could be possible with what I create and how I share it, you know, all all of those things.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Well, thank you so much That is really powerful recently, I've been obsessed with apes Like I mean just watching videos.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: My mom called me up like last week. She was like, is everything? Okay, like Like I'm very good and she was like you're sending us a video Memes and videos of gorillas. A lot of apes. Yeah, it's just, is everything a happy? I'm like, I'm okay. But one of, one of the reasons why, I mean, there are many reasons why I have been super in love with apes.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, but [00:38:00] just kind of watching, uh, gorillas, for example, relating to, uh, their, their babies. Um, has allowed me to explore and reflect on mothering, um, beyond the confines and definitions that we have assigned to what it means to mother as human beings, um, and kind of observing their tenderness. how they express affection, um, things like touch, you know, how they touch their babies has allowed me to also reflect on just the role of like expressing care and how I express care, how I receive care on a day to day basis.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, and so I resonate with some of what you, what I've heard you say around being in deep [00:39:00] meditation, Um, with other living beings, uh, and reflecting on how they live and how that offers lessons for us to live. Um, but it's, it's really a beautiful and transformative process, um, once you are in a place that you can, as you said, you can observe life being life itself and seeing that through the lens of, uh, our more than human kind of kin and siblings.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: It's really like so transformative and it, it just requires an awareness and a presence on a, you know, continuous basis. You don't need to travel halfway across the world to be doing that. You can do it right, right in your home, right in your community, in your neighborhood. Um, for me, it's YouTube because I don't have any apes living near me, but, [00:40:00] you know, I do what I do with YouTube.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: So, um, but yeah, it's, it's a really profound, uh, way of being an awareness, um, that I think can also help us, um, appreciate the best of what it means to be human, you know, When I see how, you know, in these videos, when I see how these gorillas, for example, are caring for, you know, their babies and their kin with such tenderness, it kind of reminds me of the tenderness that I receive from, you know, my own mother or like my friends or, you know, people around me.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, and it reminds me of, you know, the best of humanity and what we can offer to, to each other. Um, and it's also made me reflect on how to bring that more into the environmental justice movement. Um, [00:41:00] these notions of care, this notions of tenderness. Uh, so much of our work is directive. It's very like, we need outcomes all the time.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: You can't, you can get funding for outcomes, but you, it's very difficult to get funding for care. Um, and so it's made me also think about that. How do we, practice this revolution in a way that embodies the best of what we have as humans and the best of what we can observe in, in other species.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, so yeah, thank you. You've, you've kind of sparked my brain and maybe helped me understand why I'm watching so many gorilla videos. That's right. No, we need that.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: We need that. And it's like, it is, you know, I do think that it can be so generative, you know, that type of [00:42:00] immersion, you know, I understand, like, I understand because like my own family members are like, Please don't leave and never come back.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: You know, please don't go like, join the community of silverbacks and like never return because, you know, whatever you're disillusioned with humans. Um, 'cause you know, and would be justified. But, um, but I do think that there's, for me it is, it is an immersive process, you know, and like staying with it and being like, what is it that I wonder about?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Why does this piece resonate so much? Right. And then you get to it. Like, like you said, it's really about this tenderness. and care and how important that is to you, right? Which you're seeing reflected back, but there is a lesson there, right? And there's a lesson there that you can bring back to communities that [00:43:00] you're part of, to life forms that you are in daily interaction with and yeah. I'm glad you're doing it.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I don't know if we need like a support group for family members of like Interspecies. Yeah, exactly. Me . We need it. It's okay. It's okay. It's all love. It's just in many forms and um, we're gonna be okay. . Yeah.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Yeah. We do need a support group for sure.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: It's so interesting, I think, about some of the, [00:44:00] um, I don't know if It's happens in the U. S., but in Europe, there, sometimes there's like anti Black tropes, um, that kind of compare Black people to apes, and it's kind of

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: That definitely happens in the United States.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Okay, I just want to say, you know, Blackness is global, but it's also very diverse, so I know .

Marion Atieno Osieyo: But it's, it's so interesting reflecting on it now. I think Before, when I used to hear that, those kinds of tropes, I would be so hurt because they're obviously meant to be, um, insults to dehumanize Blackness. But then now within living in this awareness and appreciation of, um, other living beings, like non human living beings, whenever I hear that, I'm like, it's an honor to be called animal. It's an honor to be compared to apes because if you [00:45:00] observe just their sentience, their intelligence, how connected they are to the environment, how can that be a dishonor? Like, that is the most absurd thing ever.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, and it's, it's, but it's also difficult because I'm conscious that anti Blackness hurts in many ways.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: regardless of their intention or what's being said and how you can transmute that into something that's of benefit, it still hurts.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, I'm curious to understand from you, uh, whether, whether I'm guessing you do feel this, but why you feel that it's important, especially for Black people to really reconcile with other living beings, you know, in, in reciprocity as equals, kind of moving away.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, as I heard you say, decolonizing those perspectives that we are [00:46:00] separate from and superior to, um, the rest of nature.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's exactly what you just said, actually, you know, like it's, it's, uh,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: because the Comparison, for example, of black people to apes is. Yes. You know, it's an, it's an act of ideological violence and it's, it was popularized specifically to, to really disenfranchise people, to try to have people not to justify violence against black people and, but also as a pedagogical definitional,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: it's one of the places of learning separation. Right. So it's saying what it is to be human is not to be in [00:47:00] relationship with other life forms. And this definition of the human that is an anti Black definition, but it's not just anti Black because it's violent to Black people. It's anti Black because it literally defines itself in opposition.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Like it uses Blackness as an invention to construct an idea of the human that is separate. And then you get this really impoverished idea of what humanity is. You know, Toni Morrison calls it bereft, right? She's just like white people don't have anything. They're bereft because once you cut off every connection to every life form, to the whole planet, to the, all the environment, to all the other people, you know, once you do that to your own [00:48:00] indigeneity.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: and heritage as a diverse set of people who are now suddenly white, like, you know, how they've been doing with the memes of Whitney Houston. It's like, I have nothing. Right.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So, um, and that's the scarcity, right? That's the, it's, it's like a story that says you human and the most human humans are supposed to be white.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: You have nothing. So you have to be in an extractive relationship with everything around you. You have to feel so disconnected that you're completely controllable by capital. That's the story. It's not a true story. In fact, it's such a ridiculous story that it takes so much work to teach it. You have to do all of this.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: You got to compare black people to apes. [00:49:00] You got to like You know, it's like, it's so, um, it's so absurd, but you got to do it. You got to write about animals in the science literature as an animal who's writing about other animals, as if you're not even in the same planet with them. And you're so objective and you're not impacted by them and you don't care about them.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: When you do, there is nobody on a research boat that doesn't care about other species. But then there's this, like, professionalizing force to pretend like that's not the case. To construct this world where we're separate, where the people who have the most obvious witness of the majesty of every form of life on the planet have to siphon that to buy into a [00:50:00] story that's like, oh, we could save this planet.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: We're like a separate savior possibility for this planet, which is equally absurd. Um, so yeah, I think, I think that,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: you know, as black people, the great Lucille Clifton, the great poet Lucille Clifton, um, has this never published manuscript. So this is the thing when you're an archival researcher, it's always like, you see things like this, like what are the limits of publication at a particular time and all of that. But, um, she had this book that she was writing called Soul Signs, that's like a black astrology book, and she was really into astrology, and like, so were a lot of people in the 70s, and like, so are many people now, right?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So, she does this thing, which, you know, some people now would be like, is it essentialist? Is it whatever? But she's like, [00:51:00] The sole sign of black people on earth is Gemini. Of course, it resonates with me because I'm actually Gemini.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And I'm like, yes, but, um, but what she's saying is that she believes that black people are positioned on this planet as a manifestation and a lesson about both, like both in this, what it is to be flesh and spirit at the same time.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: You could see global black culture as example, example, example of like what it is to be flesh and spirit at the same time, what it is to be human and animal at the same time, what it is to, to, to not actually consent to a binary between living and dead, right? Both. Both. And, um, I think it's just so fascinating that, [00:52:00] you know, she articulated that and I think about it often.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And so when you say, why is it so important for Black people to be actively engaged in this connecting with other life forms? I see it as like an assignment, you know, to, to say like, this is what it is to be, to be God and to be animal and to be earth all at the same time, which is why to me, it's no coincidence that the great breakthrough, you know, and core intervention of the whole black feminist literary and theoretical movement and all of the activism at the core of that is.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: No, I'm not deciding whether it's more, I'm a, I'm a black person now and I'm a woman now and I'm this [00:53:00] now and I'm that now it's like all right. Beyond both to like all of it. And. You know, I'm hearing Chaka Khan, you know, I'm every woman, probably because I mentioned Whitney Houston. Anyway, there's that whole lineage, but, um, and so I do think that there is so much for us as Black people in our profound diversity, right, in the midst of what Audre Lorde calls the creative power of difference.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: We have so many portals and pathways, though, in our traditions, in, in what it takes for us to honor each other and our earlier generations and our future generations. We have so many pathways that ask that of us, that ask us to be [00:54:00] all of who we are. It's to our greatest benefit to be an honor, this allness that refuses that separation.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Conveniently. And, you know, I say facetiously because it's not actually logistically convenient. But conveniently, white supremacy has made it really clear that it's actually only white people who will benefit from separating off. and not collectivizing. I don't think it's actually true that they're benefiting from that.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: But on the terms of white supremacy, that's the idea. The idea is you cut off from those who are different. That's how you, that's how you like amass power and that's how you stay in a position to dominate. Um,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: we know that that's not really the way that it [00:55:00] works. We know that it actually takes us being all of who we are, us being as profoundly connected to each other and to Earth. You know, I think about like Nanny of the Maroons in Jamaica and like how that practice of sustaining maroon society required ancestral listening.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It required listening to the plants. It required really being attuned to the timing, you know, of what's happening with the weather. You know. In order to defeat the colonizers like that's that's what it actually takes so all of that is to say yes, I agree. It's it's it's to our great benefit, but I know that as black people practicing and embodying that connection, it actually manifests in such an abundant way.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: That it impacts all. It impacts all life, right? Which is why, even though [00:56:00] I very specifically identify as a queer black feminist, love evangelist, I also identify as an aspirational favorite cousin to all life because I think that those things, Those things go together. As the Combahee River Collective wrote in 1977, if Black women were free, everyone else would necessarily have to be free because our freedom requires the destruction of all systems of oppression.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: So, so let's go.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Let's definitely go. I'm getting ready.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: I'm in deep awe of your creative power, Alexis. Thanks.[00:57:00]

Marion Atieno Osieyo: And it's so exciting that, well, it's a deep privilege for us to also be able to receive that creative power through whatever it is that you, you choose to send out into the world. Um, I feel that from my corner of the environmental justice community, um, so much of our creative energy is spent trying to find solutions.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: that, uh, allow us to continue to exist in whatever forms of oppression that we're trying to combat. Um, and I just, I deeply want us to be able to[00:58:00]

Marion Atieno Osieyo: just have kind of radical creative power, just to be able to express our creative power, um, in service of what it is that we really desire to create, as opposed to solutions for survival, you know? Yeah, yeah. And, um, I mean, I hope through this podcast people are inspired to, to really tap into that creative energy within themselves.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, but I wondered if there was any kind of experiences or practices or beliefs that you can offer to someone listening in who. is seeking to give themselves permission to just create, um, to just unleash their creative power into the world.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Oh, what a beautiful [00:59:00] question. And what a beautiful premise to that, to that question.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It definitely, that definitely resonates. And I mean, we talked a little bit about it in terms of surrender and what it means to surrender to the fact that we actually are part of an ongoing process of creation just by being Earth. and just by being part of this universe. So I would say for people who, you know, another great black feminist thinker, I'm always going to be naming like a whole bunch of folks, um, the Tobagoan genius, MJackie Alexander.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: She, she's a mentor of mine and One of the things that she said, and I don't know if she's written it in any, like, I haven't seen it in any of her, um, essays or in any of her writing, except I see it in all of them, but not necessarily in the, [01:00:00] in these exact words. And she says that,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: she says, you know, we humans are always making distinctions that spirit doesn't make. And I think about that often, especially in relationship to my creativity and especially in relationship to, form, you know, I think it can be really stifling for people to think like, oh, they have to create something that fits into the existing form.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: That's called a, I don't know, novel or whatever, whatever it might be, or podcast even, you know, it has to be like other podcasts like this exists and I have to create in a way that. fits into that. And um, that is not really generative for everyone. You know, I, I think that especially when it happens too early in the process, you know, and I've just described this whole process of being like, [01:01:00] ultimately creating a book, but not having any intention of doing that, you know, um, it's like, We, this is part of our decolonization.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: This is part of unlearning an extractive relationship to our own creativity, which is to say, I deserve to be in the creative process that my soul is asking me to be in period. It is worthwhile because I just know that I need it. It's not worthwhile only if one day it becomes something that I share with other people, you know, it's worthwhile on its own terms.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And I won't even know what the terms of that are if I don't give myself space to be in that process. A lot of times in our creativity, we don't even know how to articulate what it is until like [01:02:00] way, way, way down the road. Because why? Because it's actually creative. It's not simply reproductive of something that exists that we know how to name.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: If we already knew it, we wouldn't be in a creative process. We'd be in a repetitive process or an explanatory process. And sometimes we do need to be in an explanatory process or a repetitive process, but our creativity is about the possibility that something will exist that from right here. it doesn't.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And not to say that it's like, it doesn't exist in the form that it's going to exist in, right? Because life is life and it's all life and energy is neither created or destroyed. And you know, we know all of this. And like you said, ideas have their lives, or you might read something I wrote and be like, that's exactly what I was processing and vice versa.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Um, but this particular way that this is going to be in form, you know, [01:03:00] like just like this particular time. the tiger lilies are going to bloom. You know, June Jordan writes about this. She explains that love is life force. He talks about the creative spirit. This is something that it just has to have space to be what it is.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And so I guess I'm just saying for all the listeners, you know, to really protect that like the seal, right? Who's like, I am not going to germinate this life until I say It's time for me to germinate this light, right? Nobody's gonna see this new seal until I've decided these are the conditions under which this should be shared.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: This should become a shared experience and that doesn't mean to say that it has to be isolating or that, you know, everybody's creativity is like you got to lock yourself in a [01:04:00] room and just like be alone with it because a lot of our creativity does happen in community, you know, but you don't have to know why you want to like just bring flowers to old women and listen to them.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: If you know that that's what you want to do. Just start doing it, you know, and you'll have more clarity about why, and you'll have more discernment in your depth of relationship to it to be like, is this something that's just for us? You know, these conversations, is it something that should be recorded or not?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Is it something that when it is recorded should be shared with this particular community or shared in this way? You know, all of all of those things. The answers to those questions come from the depth of relationship to whatever that creative process is. And sometimes I think we feel pressure a lot of times when we're trying to get funding for things, right?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It's like you have pressure to explain why it's valuable [01:05:00] on terms, you know, already exist, but it doesn't already exist. So, you know, there's a huge contradiction there. you know, it could be a different podcast to say, like, what are the hustler methodologies to be able to give ourselves that time and to be able to, you know, what is it, what, how do we actually do that in, inside of capitalism?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: But I will just say that, um, as an independent artist and scholar for the past decades, it is possible. And it, it does require, um, a faith and a listening for that impulse, that creative impulse. and to allow yourself to listen to it without being able to already figure it out and name it and contain it and package it at that moment where it's still an impulse that just needs you to surrender to it.[01:06:00]

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you so much. That is, yeah, that is so helpful for myself. And I'm guessing, and I know for other people listening, it will be deeply helpful. So thank you. Um, tell us about Your upcoming book on Audre Lorde too. You referenced it earlier, but Yes! We're ready.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Listen, I'm ready. I'm ready to know what you think about it.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Um, so, Survival is a Promise, The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde is, is a biography, or 58 biographies, or, uh, I love it. disguised collection of poems or a ceremony that, um, yeah, is coming into your hands August 20th. And it's[01:07:00]

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: first and foremost, it's an opportunity for people to just be with Audre Lorde. Like that, that's my, that's what I understood to be my assignment. That actually Audre Lorde wants to be with the people who are alive on this planet now, because she has some things to say, right? So that, that's the impulse that I had to surrender to.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And I honestly resisted it because I was like, I'm not a biographer, you know? Yes, I am. Turns out. But I had to kind of transform what biography meant to me. And people who read this will be like, Whoa, this is actually. It's different than probably other biographies that we've read. But, um, but one of the core insights and why I'm so excited to be sharing, sharing about it on Black Earth in particular, is that I think that was the case for Audre Lorde her entire life, but has not [01:08:00] been the way that we remember her, is that she was like one of us, you know, like she would be a person who would listen to this podcast.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: She would be a person who would want to be on this podcast. She would Because she identified as a part of Earth, and she was constantly, you know, geeking out, as you say, of like, geology, and like, studying all the different rocks, and the star patterns, and like, everything, and um, and her poetry is full of that, right?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It's full of nature imagery that is not metaphorical, you know, like, It's like she's working through whatever it is, her breakups, her love relationships, her political relationships, all of those things. All of that is a relationship with Earth, not only because, of course, other humans are also Earth, but because When she's talking about the stones and like she's, she's serious and she's [01:09:00] literal, like she has this huge collection of stones in her house and she'll go into her living room and she'd be like, look at this, you know, um, and she, you know, she was actively From a student.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: She was an activist. Um, she was in this group called, um, committee for a say, nuclear policy. She was thinking about energy forms and, and disaster forms and weapon forms. She was actively at the end of her life when she lived in St. Croix, protesting against offshore oil drilling. And she was doing environmental justice work in her life.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And she was saying over and over again, that Our relationship with Earth is fundamental because there's no such thing as being just a species of people with different identities working out our differences. just in the air, [01:10:00] we do it as Earth. If we destroy our relationship with Earth, if we deny that we are Earth to an extent where our lives are completely incompatible with the rest of life, we're not going to have a conversation about Black feminism or anything else.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: You know, like that, there's, there's no condition for that if we don't prioritize our relationship with Earth. And one of the, my favorite ways that she articulates this is, After she has survived Hurricane Hugo in St. Croix, St. Croix was like the epicenter of Hurricane Hugo, huge loss of life, so much, um, so much damage, a very long lasting, um, you know, colonial abandonment by the United States and, and policing and the idea that, like, the people were looters and, you know, all, all of this.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Um, but [01:11:00] Audre Lorde is writing to this. Black lesbian group in the Bay Area of California called Ashe, and they have been like sending supplies to St. Croix because they're like, oh my gosh, you know, like our poet warrior mother, you know, is there surviving this hurricane. What can we do? And they, you know, they did this great materials drive and they sent tarps and they said, you know, all sorts of like really practical supplies.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And in what is basically the most extensive complicated thank you letter you have ever seen. Um, she writes this whole, um, her witness of what the situation is. What she says is at the core of it is that the earth has something to say. about our conduct and that we are in breach of the covenant upon which we live.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And it's that language of the covenant. That's [01:12:00] like,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: we are in side of a promise where earth life is a promise. to just exist together. And she understands what it took a long time for climate scientists to say, by the way, like decades later, that the strength of these storms is related to all of the extractive polluting behaviors of the multinational corporations that have been the expression of what the human species is for centuries.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Right? So she, when she says the covenant upon which we live, that to me, I was like, okay, I get it. I get it. This is why [01:13:00] she was like, I have to just continue to study earth because earth is a relationship and that's why survival is a promise. Right. We're in, we're inside of this relationship. We're breaking our promise constantly,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: constantly, you know, like basically everything we buy and the way that we buy it. The fact that we have not developed the telepathy to conduct this conversation in any other way than through, you know, machines that, um, in their component parts are part of an extractive process that is killing our people.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Right. Right. Right. We're breaking our promise to life, and we have to find a way to get into right relationship. And [01:14:00] this is actually what was at stake in everything that Audre Lorde wrote about creative power, about difference, about love, about, um, the possibility of, of everything. What she wrote about her children, when she wrote about her lovers, when she wrote about, um, the organizations that she was part of.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Everything we do is a space to possibly practice. learning another relationship and also having compassion for the fact that just because the power that we have is not the power we wish we had, you know, like, I wish I could just be like, ah, I reached my hand out and like the temperatures of the oceans are what they should be and are in balance, right?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I wish I could do that. I don't actually have that power as an individual. Um, that doesn't mean I'm actually powerless [01:15:00] in relationship to. That process. And just because, yes, right now we have to talk to each other through the computer and we understand, we, we understand what that is. Maybe not everybody using a computer understands, but like we understand what that means.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It doesn't mean that we actually don't have the power to communicate in the ways that we can. Right. It's, it's, um, Audre talked about the fact that it's really dangerous. to just abnegate our power and to say, well, because I don't have infinite power as an individual, that means I can't do anything. That means it doesn't matter what I do.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: It does matter what we do and the power that we have, even if it feels like it's so much smaller than the power that we think we need, it's our power to activate, [01:16:00] you know, like it's our energy to bring together with each other. And so. I could go on, obviously, for a long time. It is a long biography. It's, or it's 58 biographies or whatever.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: But, um, it is An opportunity for us to be without possibility and to watch Audre Lorde navigating that in her life. Um, and also to really learn about her in relationship to the, to the planet. So I'm really excited for especially what the Black Earth crew is going to do with this book and say about it and take it to another level and critique it and all those things.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Um, Because Audre Lorde was definitely one of us. She was really part of this crew and she's not acknowledged in that way, which is telling because this happens often, right? With historical figures, some of the most deeply radical aspects of [01:17:00] their work have not been the aspects that have been useful for the institutions that have co opted them.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: And maybe I just won't say that much more about that, but you know what I mean. Um, and so this to me was me surrendering to the fact that, and even the fact that it has like a different scale of publisher than I've worked with before, is that Audre Lorde really, she really has something to say. And we need The version of Audre Lorde that has been, um, intentionally forgotten because it's the hardest part to deal with, but it's the most urgently necessary part.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I, I strongly believe that if people had listened, to what Audre Lorde was saying about our environment when she was saying it. So many aspects [01:18:00] of the crisis that we're in right now could be averted and we could be in a totally different place. Better late than never. And just Audre Lorde's enduring presence, you know, she is here with us and I'm so excited that we're going to get to draw on her collectively. a way that we haven't before.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you so much. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to, to read the book, to meditate on the book as well. Um, that's, that's one of the beauties about engaging with art in general is the opportunity and, and nature. It's the opportunity to be in deep meditation and to allow the work to transform you.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Um, so thank you. I'm very excited. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Um, Alexis, how can we support you and how can we support your work?

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Oh my goodness. Yeah, just stay in touch and keep [01:19:00] doing what you're doing. You know, it's so beautiful. I'm really honored to be a part of it, and I just hope that we can stay in conversation.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: I'm very serious, you know, if people, if, you know, Black Earth family, if they read Undrowned, if they read Survival is a Promise, I really want to know what people think, and I really want. us to use it in our conversations about what we're about to do. So yes, that's what I find supportive

Marion Atieno Osieyo: thank you so much.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: And we'll put in our show notes, um, all your links to like your site and to your books as well for people to access. Um, so thank you so much, Alexis. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to, to be in deep conversation with you. It felt like deep listening, which is That's really where I come alive as a person, so.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Woohoo. Yes. Thank you for listening. Thank you for everything you shared. Thank you for holding and creating this space. I'm grateful for, for you. Thank you. [01:20:00] Thank you.

Marion Atieno Osieyo: Thank you so much for joining us on today's episode. We'd love to stay connected with you. You can subscribe to Black Earth Podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, and you can also connect with us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok at Black Earth Podcast. See you in the next episode.