Episode 30 - Alexis Pauline Gumbs
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In my intro you’ll hear me say Alexis is a Mermaid Mammal Apprentice...true dat...but as you'll hear her actually says - she is a Marine Mammal Apprentice...true dat! Currently, Alexis is carrying on blood line traditions of listening to whales. She says, "one foot in the water one foot in the sand is where I hear the best."
Alexis speaks of coming from mental health and spiritual workers...shoreline people, oyster workers, church founders, freedom practicing people/and a grandmother who designed the revolutionary flag for Anguilla, and is founder of the Caribbean Mental Health Association. Always thinking about birthing, Alexis became a doula because her Mom (who is a therapist) is a doula - and she wanted to do mother-daughter doulaing.
A 2020-21 National Humanities Center Fellow Alexis is an academic guided by intellectual practices inspired by Black liberation and Love, Alexis felt like she needed to be with her people, not isolated from them. She asked herself, "what is the best way for me to do my intellectual work in community...what is a way that I can understand how this work has been happening...and how can I make those histories more visible". When I ask what her Soul's mission Work is, she says she is here to help us know that "we are Loved, infinity Loved. That we have access to all the Love".
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is the author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity, M Archive: After the End of the World, Dub: Finding Ceremony (forthcoming Feb 2020) and the co-editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines. She was dramaturg for the world premiere of dat Black Mermaid Man Lady by Sharon Bridgforth, is the literary advisor for the Ntozake Shange Estate and the creative writing editor for Feminist Studies. Alexis, along with partner Sangodare, is in the midst of building the Mobile Homecoming Living Library and Archive in Durham, NC which sustains the lives and legacies of Black Feminist elders their legacy bearers and caregivers.
More about Alexis and all dem Guests HERE.