“We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Maurice Wallace, Supervisor ___________________________ Karla Holloway ___________________________ Fred Moten ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2010 i v ABSTRACT “We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs Department of English Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Maurice Wallace, Supervisor ___________________________ Karla Holloway ___________________________ Fred Moten ___________________________ Wahneema Lubiano An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English in the Graduate School of Duke University 2010 Copyright by Alexis Pauline Gumbs 2010 Abstract “We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves”: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism 1968-1996 addresses the questions of mothering and survival from a queer, diasporic literary perspective, arguing that the literary practices of Black feminists Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Alexis De Veaux and Barbara Smith enable a counternarrative to a neoliberal logic that criminalizes Black mothering and the survival of Black people outside and after their utility to capital. Treating Audre Lorde and June Jordan as primary theorists of mothering and survival, and Alexis De Veaux and Barbara Smith as key literary historical figures in the queer manifestation of Black feminist modes of literary production, this dissertation uses previously unavailable archival material, and queer of color critique and critical Black diasporic theoretical approaches to create an intergenerative reading practice. An intergenerative reading practice interrupts the social reproduction of meaning and value across time, and places untimely literary moments and products in poetic relationship to each other in order to reveal the possibility of another meaning of life. Ultimately this dissertation functions as a sample narrative towards the alternate meaning of life that the poetic breaks of Black feminist literary production in the queer spaces of counter-cultural markets, classrooms, autonomous publishing collectives make possible, concluding that mothering is indeed a reflexive and queer way of reading the present in the service of a substantively different future in which our outlawed love survives. iv Dedication To my mother Pauline Ann McKenzie-Day always, always. v Contents Abstract..........................................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... viii Prologue: To Those of Us Who Live at the Shoreline ........................................................ 1 Introduction: Never Meant to Survive............................................................................... 24 Chapter 1: Survival-An Intervention into Meaning……………………………………………………92 Chapter 2: The Ante-Essence of Black Mothering: Authority and Queer Danger ........... 184 “To Mother Ourselves”....................................................................................................... 187 Black Mothers are Dangerous.......................................................................................... 193 Chapter 3: Teaching Us Questions: The Black Mutha…and the Transformation of Discipline .................................................................................................................................... 262 Black Mother as Bad Teacher........................................................................................... 262 The Problem of Language in a Reproductive State........................................................ 262 The Forced Poetics of Intergenerational Address........................................................ 266 The Urgency of Intergenerational Address in the Queer Time and Space of the Classroom .......................................................................................................................... 272 Chapter 4: “Difficult Miracle”: Audre Lorde, June Jordan and the Forced Poetics of Publishing in the Black Arts Market....................................................................................... 323 June Jordan and the Difficult Miracle of Poetry in Time ............................................. 328 Poetry is (A Hungering For).............................................................................................. 329 Chapter 5: Publishing and Survival: The Meanings of Production .................................... 422 The (Im)Possibility of Poetry ........................................................................................... 423 Kizzy: Rooted at the Shoreline......................................................................................... 446 Our Bodies/Our Limits .................................................................................................... 454 To Survive: Barbara Smith and Alexis De Veaux ........................................................ 466 vi Needed to Last: Kitchen Table Sacrifices ...................................................................... 466 Black Feminist Means: Of Production........................................................................... 471 Forgotten Flamboyance: Alexis De Veaux …..………………………………….…484 Gaptooth Continuity………………………………………………………………....491 Survival Unbound: Blue Heat…………………………………………………….….493 Change Itself Changes………………………………………………..………………499 References…………….………………………………………………………………………..501 Biography………….…………………………………………………………………………...510 vii Acknowledgements I am grateful to you, all of my ancestors, for guiding my hands and my direction. I am grateful to you, my family, for unconditionally loving me and kindly interpreting my quirkiness as brilliance for decades. I am grateful to you, each member of my genius dream team committee, for not only providing priceless advice, but also for living brave lives so clearly worth emulating. I don’t know if I could have written so many sincere words in any other US city than Durham, North Carolina. I am grateful for you, my local community for showing me the urgency and utility of what could have otherwise been merely self-indulgent work. I am proud to participate in the transformation of the universe from the epicenter that is Durham. I am also grateful for you, far-flung community; you lovingly received and celebrated bits and pieces of this dissertation via facebook, tumblr and text- messages. This project probably would have taken the rest of my life without funding from Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, the Martin Duberman Research Fellowship from the New York Public Library, the Emory’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library Dissertation Research Fellowship, Franklin Humanities Institute Dissertation Research Award, Duke University Women’s Studies Race and Gender Award, the Andrew Mellon Award in Humanistic Studies, the Duke Endowment Fellowship, and the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. Infinite thanks to the sacred work of the archivists preserving and sharing the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive at the Schomburg Library, the June Jordan Collection at the Schlesinger Library, the Audre Lorde Collection at Spelman College, the Broadside Press, Lucille Clifton, Thulani Davis and viii Alice Walker Collections at the Emory Manuscript and Rare Book Library and the amazing feminist periodical collection at the Sallie Bingham Archive at Duke University. I am thankful for you, Cheryll Greene, for teaching me about the complicated scene of Essence magazine and the bravery and brilliance of your friend Alexis De Veaux. I am thankful for you, Alexis De Veaux, for being yourself and humoring me. I am thankful for you, asha bandele, for teaching me about your mentor Audre Lorde and living her integrity daily. I am thankful for you, Farah Jasmine Griffin, for telling me about the Kitchen Table Press Freedom Organizing Series and changing everything. I am thankful for you, Monica Miller, for so gracefully showing me how it is done. I am thankful for you, Steven Fullwood, my archivist soulmate for treasuring exactly the evidence I need to be transformed by. I am thankful for you, Lisa Moore, for being the queer survival of Black Feminism in print. I am thankful for you, Renita Weems, for stretching your memory on my behalf. I am grateful for you, Mama Nia, for constant mentorship, love and faith. I am grateful for you, Zachari Curtis and Ebony Golden, for growing embodied shared creativity always and forever ashe. I am grateful for you Cara Page, Aishah Simmons, Shirlette Ammons and Kai Barrow for showing me how to treasure elders and honor ancestors with the grace of the everyday. I am grateful for you Uncle Keith for being such an open organic intellectual. I am grateful for you Moya Bailey, Fallon Wilson, Elle Gray, Stacey Milbern, Rose Simms, Adele Nieves, Noemi Martinez, Walidah Imarisha, Mai’a Williams, Nadia Abou- ix Karr, Sydette Harry, Susana Adame, Meagan Ortiz, Fabiola Sandoval, Aaminah Hernandez, Jessica