Survival Is a Promise

★ "[A] scintillating tour de force . . . in a free-ranging style as distinctive as its subject . . . Forgoing the strictures and linearity of traditional biography, Gumbs enlivens her narrative with unconventional flourishes that in lesser hands might feel like a gimmick but here come across as revelation . . . Gumbs is a master stylist with a knack for writing sentences at once direct and expansive ('The scale of the life of the poet is the scale of the universe”). This is a feast for the intellect—and the soul." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

★ "A celebration of a tireless advocate . . . Stars, hurricanes, and even whale songs feature in a narrative notable for lyrical prose and unabashed admiration . . . Gumbs offers thoughtful analyses of Lorde’s poems, as well as the pressures and pleasures of her life: friends and lovers; marriage to a white gay man; motherhood; divorce; and recurring cancer . . . A defiant woman sensitively and incisively portrayed." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"An award-winning poet, writer, feminist and activist in her own right, Gumbs is among the first researchers to delve into Lorde's manuscript archives. The resulting book highlights the late author's commitment to interrogating what it means to survive on this planet—and how Lorde's radical understanding of ecology can guide us today." —Erika Taylor, NPR

“Alexis Pauline Gumbs has been a kindred keeper of Audre Lorde’s lesbian-warrior-poet legacy for nearly two decades. This long overdue, and yet right-on-time biography of the Lorde caresses and transgresses the limits of genre, to care for all the women and girls that Audre Lorde ever was or hoped to be. Nobody tends to Black girls’ stories like Alexis P. Gumbs, who takes Black women deadly, rigorously seriously. This book is a study in mastery of forms, with the kind of sacred irreverence that makes clear who the real geniuses always were. I read this book and could hear the Lorde saying, ‘and it was good.’” —Brittney Cooper, author of the New York Times bestseller Eloquent Rage

“Survival Is a Promise is a lightning strike of a biography on the Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. It is poetic in form, political in scope, and revelatory in understanding Lorde’s divine relationship to the Earth as an ecological thinker. Alexis Pauline Gumbs has created a community of poetic ancestors including June Jordan, Adrienne Rich, and Fannie Lou Harmer, now eternal sisters with whom she stands alongside in a circle of relationships. Gumbs describes the work of Audre Lorde as ‘a Black archive of buried photosynthesis.’ In her hands, it is pure light in the vitality of the struggle. This singular volume is a ‘force field of love’ full of prophetic dreaming animating not only what is possible but necessary. Power lives in this book. Chapter by stunning chapter, this spiritual biography made me want to be braver in voice and spirit.” —Terry Tempest Williams, Writer-in-Residence, Harvard Divinity School

“Only Alexis Pauline Gumbs could have written Audre Lorde’s life story in seven dimensions. She is Lorde’s spiritual daughter, and Survival Is a Promise is no mere biography—it is a communion, an ancestral divination, a long intimate walk where history, poetry, politics, and wisdom are passed to a new generation.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination