Interview: Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Can you start by telling the readers a little about yourself?

 I live in Durham, North Carolina which we like to think of as the center of the universe with my partner Sangodare.  We are both artists and educators and we are the founders of the Mobile Homecoming Trust Living Library and Archive.  Right now we are towards the end of a visiting appointment at University of Minnesota.  I'm also the author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity and M Archive: After the End of the World and co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. 

You run a lending library out of your home that you've dubbed the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, correct? Can you tell me how that got started?

The Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind is a tiny Black Feminist University I founded ten years ago and the library evolved organically out of it.  For one, I was about to graduate from my PhD program and I had collected a huge amount of books on and about Black feminism for my own research, and as our educational programs gained visibility Black feminists all over the country began to send us books and artifacts.  The library became an important place for Black feminists who had to down-size their libraries as they aged, moved to care for their own elders, were displaced due to housing injustice and for the children of Black feminists who weren't sure what to do with their collections. 

You are raising funds to start a mobil lending library, did that grow out of what you are already doing? And why do you think it is important to make the library mobil?

Yes.  We are creating a Black Feminist Bookmobile, and in two ways it is an outgrowth of what is already going on.  It definitely grows out of our desire to share the collection of books as a resource beyond our physical home and it also continues the practice that has made Black Feminism sustainable across generations, the practice of sharing Black feminist books.  So many of us, yourself included, are Black feminist bookmobiles because we carry that work with us, we bring it with us into the institutions we infiltrate, we transmit the ideas to each other.  That's actually the basis of our fundraising campaign on teespring.  Hundreds of people have bought hoodies, tank-tops, totebags with our Black Feminist Bookmobile logo on it for themselves or to honor other people who are Black Feminist Bookmobiles.

A lot of your work has to do with amplifying black feminist voices. Can you talk about the ways you are doing that?

Well I have a by every means necessary approach.  One of my favorite ways of amplifying Black feminist voices is through the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus.  It is a series of guided meditations based on quotations by the revolutionary ancestors who have informed my practice of Black Feminism. I made collages in honor of each ancestor and my partner Sangodare composed music in their honor too.  We are working on creating a deck of Black Feminist Breathing Cards and a meditation app. At the basis of it is just the repetition of an important piece of Black Feminist Wisdom such as Audre Lorde's "I am who I am doing what I came to do," or June Jordan's "We are the ones we've been waiting for." 

What is the hardest part about doing the work that you do?

Well, my partner and I are both independent artists and educators which means we are our own bosses.  It's liberating but it also means that we can't depend on the stability of long-term institutional relationships, so we have to be consistently creative about creating income streams for our lives and our projects. 

What is something you have learned from doing the work that you do?

I feel like I'm learning something everyday.  The most important thing that I am learning right now is how to make space for emotional wisdom.  The work of learning the lessons of my own emotions, which Audre Lorde teaches us is so necessary for collective liberation, operates on a very different timeline than academic learning.  For me it requires stillness and silence which can be hard to come by in an age where information and communication moves so fast. 

We are never really done growing up. What do you hope to do in the future?

I am certainly not done growing up, my partner and I often joke that we are still trying to learn "adulting."  We are working towards building an intergenerational growth and transformation center in Durham that will be a living library, not only for books and Black feminist archival materials, but also with residential space and long-term care for Black feminists of all ages, especially elders..who are our most important living libraries.  

What gets you out of bed in the morning?

I write down my dreams.  So every morning I am excited to write down my dreams and meditate on them.  There are so many lessons in our dreams, and writing them down has helped me remember them much more than I used to.  (More on the dream work at here)

I wake up early in the morning and write down my dreams and meditate and write and dance.  It's really my favorite part of the day. 

Do you have advice for girls growing up today? 

I think the most important thing is to learn to listen to yourself and to trust what you know. There are so many messages that we have access to every day and we can't react to all of them.  We all have to find our own way of grounding in a deeper knowledge that comes from within. 

Do you have any female figures that you look up to? (real or fiction)

So many.  SO MANY.  Right now my partner and I are reading all of the works of Grace Lee Boggs together.   She was an evolutionary who lived more than a century, mostly in Detroit and was part of all the major social movements of the 20th Century and the 21st Century so far.   I would recommend everyone read her work and watch her interviews.  She has impacted so many generations and you can see her impact especially in Detroit where Detroit Summer and the Boggs School are continuing her lifetime of work.  Also she graduated from Barnard College like me.  :) 

Why do you think it is important to tell our stories?

I remember when I first read Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (she went to Barnard too by the way, noticing a theme?) and I felt the story of Janie, her protagonist, in my body.  I have never forgotten the power of stories to reach and change people even across death.  I see that as a major part of my life's work, to activate story as ceremony to connect us across generations.  Ultimately, finding ways to tell our stories allows us to honor how interconnected we are across everything. 

What is something in life that you are most proud of?

I am an a very proud Auntie and my niece McKenzie is a huge fan of Fannie Lou Hamer.  And has been since the age of one.  I love that.  I live based on the belief that the Black feminist work that I do to transmit the revolutionary love of Black women across generations can be accessed by anyone and my niece proved that to me.  I'm really proud of that, and proud of her and proud of my sister (also a Barnard graduate, ahem) for being an amazing persona and a fantastic mom. 

A few favorites:

There are too many favorites.  But I would recommend

Book
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde

 Band/Song/Music Genre 
Everything by Aretha Franklin especially the live album Aretha Franklin: Live at Filmore West

 Quote 
"We have always loved each other." -Lucille Clifton

What is your life motto?

“You are loved”