Discover Top Posts Tagged with #theshoreline

Welcome to the Shoreline

The shoreline is traditionally defined as the line along which a large body of water meets the land, but for Gumbs, the Shoreline is the connection between the ancestors and the living and a place at which those still living can meet to honor and listen to the ancestors. For a long time in her life, Dr. Gumbs has been inspired by archival research because she finds it amazing that she can read the direct words of someone who has long since passed and feel as though she is hearing them speak. Primary sources and research can sometimes provide more insight than any other source. This is not just a way of connecting with one’s ancestors, but it is a method of passing down traditions, practices, stories, and love to generations that will come long after us (Beenash, “Intellectuals Outside the Academy.”).

The power of the Shoreline is the willingness for all those who are women of color and queer people of color to come together to be around people who can relate to them to learn from common ancestors. The world will very consistently attempt to break down this collective action by labeling large groups of people of color together as dangerous or gang-related but they will always persevere and even when the world is destroyed and bodies are broken down, these women and queer individuals will still survive. They will survive in the memories of the living or as physical imprints on the world. It is because Dr. Gumbs knows this as fact that she writes on Black life being as persistent as roaches; this is borrowed from Audre Lorde’s “The Brown Menace, or Poem To the Survival of Roaches.” I’m sure anyone new to this idea will find it ridiculous and a bit disturbing to be referred to as roaches. However, Gumbs explains that there is a certain power within black people that make them almost nuclear to the point of having the survival abilities of a roach. We may be pathologized by society and made into constant targets of hate and abuse, but our resilience and persistence is what has kept us alive up to this point and it is what will keep us alive (even if only in spirit and essence) for future that awaits us.

#TheShoreline #The Ancestors #Roaches #BeautifulBlackWomen #HonoringTheAncestors #Survival #Community #Listening

Embodying the Teachings of a Queer, Black, Feminist Troublemaker

Dr. Gumbs gives explicit instructions to “tell them how we found each other again…tell them why we needed armor and what we did before the harm. tell them about … god… and what we left to tell the tale. tell them about the whales… how they taught us to make time out of salt. how they deepened our lungs. opened the top of our heads. how they made their whole bodies into drums to show us how it would be,” because it provides a necessary counter-history to what whiteness has tried to define Black life as and limit it to (Gumbs, Dub, 2020).

I chose to do this project based on Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs because when I learned of her work, even though I had learned it in the competitive arena of debate, I learned that competition did not always need to be antagonistic and when facing other queer, Black folk, it was a chance to grow and extend the Shoreline. I loved that I was able to learn more about my identity in such a peaceful and mindful way. Her work of using poetry to break normative teachings and create coalitions around Black, Queer individuals how been brought to life through her literature as well as through the way I have chosen to interact with it.

The above images are matching tattoos that I have with my best-friend. She is my debate partner, my soul sista, one of my most important Black Mothers, and a lifelong companion that has chosen to learn about Gumbs and experience the Shoreline together with me. What we have done not only helps us reclaim autonomy over our identities but our bodies as well: “Black women’s literary and expressive culture is as invested in recovering a diasporic past as it is with creating alternative diasporic futures as a new avenue for exploring core themes in contemporary feminist thought, such as motherhood, women’s activism, women’s relationships, gender roles, and female sexualities... Women writers attempt to reclaim the terms of eroticism and desire, rescuing sexuality and the sexualized female (and male) body from the strictures of established social practice. ”(Montgomery, The Postapocalyptic Black Female Imagination). It’s not secret that the black female body is overly sexualized by society. Our chose with these tattoos reclaimed our sexuality in regards to our own bodies, while honoring our ancestors and reminding us to “inhale” and “exhale”. And in time when it’s too tough to breath, he have each other and our other black queer family with breath for us, allowing us to live through them. We have borrowed from the teaching of Gumbs and Montgomery and have chosen to embody our Black Queerness.