GLR May-June 2025

A ‘Quantum Biography’ of Audre Lorde

“P OETRY is not a luxury.” “My silences had not pro tected me. Your silence will not protect you.” “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Much of the writing by groundbreaking Black feminist poet and essayist Audre Lorde is eminently quotable, perfect for this soundbite age. A photograph of Lorde in front of a black

The poet “kept everything from her child hood poems to box after box of correspon dence and a lifetime of journals.” The author shows that she is very much like her subject, who said in a 1987 radio inter view: “My eyes are always hungry for de tail.” Gumbs revels in such items as the budding poet’s favorite nursery rhymes, and checks the year that Lorde claimed to have heard a particular song against the

R EGINALD H ARRIS

SURVIVAL IS A PROMISE The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Farrar, Straus and Giroux 528 pages, $35.

year of its release. Gumbs’s research became unexpectedly topical when she uncovered the source of a rift between Audre Lorde and June Jordan. The two poets stopped communicating in 1982 in the wake of Jordan’s opposition to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the massacre of more than 2,000 people in Shabra and at the Shatila refugee camp. Although previously close to Lorde, the often volatile Jordan was angered by Lorde’s lack of support for her. Jewish lesbian poet and essayist Adrienne Rich man aged to remain connected to both poets, passing along news to

board on which is written “Women are powerful and danger ous” has become a familiar, widely shared image. In response to attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and women’s and LGBT rights, the words of the self-described “Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” have lately gone viral, turning her into an online superstar. The first full study of Audre Lorde’s life since her death in 1992, Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde , urges us to look at Lorde as more than just a meme. As its au thor, fellow poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs, writes: “We need her

each about the other. Although they contin ued to teach each other’s work, and while some documents will remain sealed until 2050, it appears that Lorde and Jordan never spoke or corresponded again. Lorde used the word “biomythography” to describe her 1982 book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name , a word that could also apply to Survival Is a Promise , which is not a standard biography but a unique and per sonal poetic, scientific, and biographical meditation. Gumbs states in the prologue: “This is a quantum biography where life in full emerges in the field in relation to each particle. This is a cosmic biography where the dynamic of the planet and the universe are never separate from the life of any being.” She uses various forms and prose structures to tell Lorde’s story from a vari ety of angles, as if through a fast-paced kaleidoscope. A chapter on the poet’s life at Hunter College High School, for example, is interspersed with lines from Edna St. Vin

Audre Lorde at the Poetry Foundation, 1983. Robert Alexander (Getty Images).

cent Millay’s “Renascence,” her favorite poet and poem at that time. Later, Lorde’s teaching years at Hunter College are illu minated through comments from former students, including Sarah Schulman, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Jewelle Gomez, Donna Masini, and Lorde’s own daughter, Elizabeth Rollins-Lorde, who also attended her mother’s poetry workshop. Many chapters of Survival Is a Promise are structured around a specific topic, such as “Hair,” for example, or viewed through Lorde’s correspondence and interactions with individ uals like poets Essex Hemphill and Pat Parker. The author finds numerous links between Lorde and science or the natural world:

survival poetics beyond the iconic version of her that has be come useful for diversity center walls and grant applications. We need the center of her life, the poetry society at large has mostly ignored, preferring to recycle the most quotable lines of her most quotable essays (necessary as those essays are!).” Having been given nearly complete access to Lorde’s ex tensive archives, and with the blessing of her final partner, Glo ria Joseph, Gumbs dives deeply into the poet’s life and work, offering the reader a wealth of previously unavailable material.

Reginald Harris is a writer and poet based in Brooklyn. 42

TheG & LR