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A review by bickie
Dub: Finding Ceremony by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
5.0
Truly a masterpiece. I read this in fits and spurts because it's so deep. I take time to think about the poems (many of them are paragraphs with no capital letters; many are best read out loud because of the rhythm, rhyme, and rap-like repetition of sounds), often journalling afterward. I don't understand many of the references, definitely none of the ones to Sylvia Wynter's work, with which I'm completely unfamiliar. I highly recommend this book; it's incredible. I think I'll be reading this again and again.
From the publisher:
In these prose poems, Gumbs channels the voices of her ancestors, including whales, coral, and oceanic bacteria, to tell stories of diaspora, indigeneity, migration, blackness, genius, mothering, grief, and harm. Tracing the origins of colonialism, genocide, and slavery as they converge in Black feminist practice, Gumbs explores the potential for the poetic and narrative undoing of the knowledge that underpins the concept of Western humanity. Throughout, she reminds us that dominant modes of being human and the oppression those modes create can be challenged, and that it is possible to make ourselves and our planet anew.
From the publisher:
In these prose poems, Gumbs channels the voices of her ancestors, including whales, coral, and oceanic bacteria, to tell stories of diaspora, indigeneity, migration, blackness, genius, mothering, grief, and harm. Tracing the origins of colonialism, genocide, and slavery as they converge in Black feminist practice, Gumbs explores the potential for the poetic and narrative undoing of the knowledge that underpins the concept of Western humanity. Throughout, she reminds us that dominant modes of being human and the oppression those modes create can be challenged, and that it is possible to make ourselves and our planet anew.