Birthing a New Planetary Consciousness: Black Feminists in Conversation

Birthing a New Planetary Consciousness: Black Feminists in Conversation

Join us to celebrate the launch of Alexis Pauline Gumbs new biography of Audre Lorde, Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. Julia Chinyere Oparah and Dr Gumbs will reflect on their involvement in the movement for Birth Justice, and then move outward to explore all the many struggles and consciousness shifts that we need to birth in order to achieve liberation. The event will culminate with a discussion of what we can learn from Black feminist poet and visionary Audre Lorde in this moment, and a short reading from Survival is a Promise. Lorde’s understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive—to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.This in-person event will be held at Fromm Hall 115, Golden Gate Avenue, University of San Francisco. Don't miss out on this opportunity to be a part of an uplifting and transformative dialogue!

Free and Open to the Public; Refreshments provided!

Presented by the Davies Forum, University of San Francisco

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.)

All of Alexis’s work is grounded in a community building ethic and would not be possible without her communities of accountability in Durham, NC the broader US Southeast and the global south. As a co-founder member of UBUNTU A Women of Color Survivor-Led Coalition to End Gendered Violence, Warrior Healers Organizing Trust and Earthseed Land Collective in Durham, NC, a member of the first visioning council of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Network and a participant in Southerners on New Ground, Allied Media Projects, Black Women’s Blueprint and the International Black Youth Summit for more than a decade she brings a passion for the issues that impact oppressed communities and an intimate knowledge of the resilience of movements led by Black, indigenous, working class women and queer people of color. Her writings in key movement periodicals such as Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Abolitionist, Ms. Magazine, and the collections Abolition Now, The Revolution Starts at Home, Dear Sister and the Transformative Justice Reader have offered clarity and inspiration to generations of activists.

Alexis is a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize Winner in Poetry. Alexis’s most recent book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals won the 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction.

Julia Chinyere Oparah is a social justice educator, transformational leader, activist scholar and coach who has published extensively on black maternal health, decarceral politics, research justice, and transnational black feminisms. She is the co-founder of Black Women Birthing and co-author of Birthing Justice: Black Women, Pregnancy, and Childbirth, a seminal text that puts black women at the center of debates about the crisis in maternal health care. She is lead author of Battling Over Birth, a human rights report that challenges existing research paradigms used to investigate black women's perinatal health, using a research justice framework. She has also written articles on Black birthworkers, birth experiences, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Chinyere is founder of the Center for Liberated Leadership and is an outspoken advocate and supporter for BIPOC and anti-racist leaders in the face of backlash.

Special thanks to our sponsors:

Black Women Birthing Justice

Legal Services for Prisoners with Children

One Love Black Community

California Black Women's Health Project

USF Office of Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

USF Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good

USF Department of Sociology, Critical Diversity Studies, Gender and Sexualities Studies.

Host or Publisher University of San Francisco Davies Forum