Dub

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. She is the author of Spill and M Archive, both also published by Duke University Press.

• A Note  ixRequest  1Commitment  3Instructions  5Opening  7Whale Chorus  15Remembering  21NunÁnuk  34Boda  40Anguilla  47Another Set of Instructions  66Red August  74Relation  92Prophet  94And  110Skin  114Losing it All  120It's Your Father  126Edict  145Edgegrove  153Unlearning Herself  163Birth Chorus  177Conditions  194Jamaica  199Blood Chorus  202Shop  214Orchard  220Cycle  227Saving the Planet  231Staying  239Letting Go  246Acknowledgments  253Notes  261Crate Dig  273

“Grounded in orÍkÌ-like references to Sylvia Wynter’s oeuvre, Dub simultaneously contracts and expands to create a new form of proprioception, which allows us as a species, phantomed by the corrosive and lacerating actions of history, to locate ourselves in relation to other species, as well as within the time-space continuum of the yet to be, the now and the ‘past.’ Part prayer, oration, exhortation, commentary and story, Dub amplifies ancestral voices to become mythopoesis in the making.” - M. NourbeSe Philip, author of (Zong!) “Offering a sweeping, thoughtful, and exquisite meditation on Sylvia Wynter's work, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's poetic engagement represents a new and unique way of encountering and paying homage to Black feminist theory and Black feminist theorists. A beautiful and graceful text, Dub will inspire readers to return to and to rethink Wynter's work and her place within African Diaspora studies, Caribbean studies, and Black feminist studies.” - Lisa B. Thompson, author of (Single Black Female) "Breath is an important theme in Dub. As is gratitude in the face of environmental decline. Because our ancestors navigated so intimately through change, Gumbs sets out to prove, so can we. . . . [An] exquisitely rendered love letter. . . ." - Ashia Ajani (Sierra) "People throw around terms like Genius and Magic frequently but if you open this book, flip to any passage, and don’t feel moved from your soul then I will assume that you don’t have one. 5 Stars aren't enough for this sacred text but it's all we got so . . . ." - Adrien Julious (Authentically Adrien blog) "I am so grateful that Alexis Pauline Gumbs listens to Black women writers and scholars the way that she does. . . . Dub is a book of our now. As tends to be the case with the books that Gumbs summons, the timing of Dub is prescient. With our breathless global attention set to registering the various way a virus connects all life forms, I cannot think of a better time for a book that tarries with and makes ceremony with Sylvia Wynter." - Tiffany Lethabo King (Antipode) "[G]round-breaking. . . . Gumbs’s trilogy embraces the lyric beauty in the acts of naming, remembering, and finding one’s way back to the source. . . . Reading Gumbs’s books feels like reading an archive that will someday, who knows maybe even someday soon, usher in an era of radical transformation." - Kathryn Nuernberger (West Branch) “Both a gathering and a recovery, this last pivotal volume in a trilogy commits to a new poetics. . . . Dub wakes us concussively. Both wrenching and playful, it offers instructions (two sets of them), warnings, and its central bid to listen to the undrowned.” - Susan McCabe (Los Angeles Review of Books)