Survival Is a Promise

Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde is what scholar and poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs likes to call a “quantum biography.” To understand Audre Lorde’s life and lasting legacy, the author chose to forgo linear chronology to instead traverse space and time. Using Lorde’s poems, essays, teachings, and, for the first time, unpublished archives, Gumbs paints a stunning portrait of the late artist as a Black, feminist lesbian, a prolific professor, a tireless advocate, and a cancer survivor. Lorde’s ability to overcome whatever challenges life threw at her—a childhood disability, overly strict parents, and the death of her first love, to name a few—also makes the book an unconventional guide to finding resilience in an ever-changing world.

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