Alexis Pauline Gumbs was the first person to dig through the archives of several radical black feminist mothers including June Jordan, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, and Toni Cade Bambara while writing her dissertation We Can Learn to Mother Ourselves: The Queer Survival of Black Feminism, a 500-page work. Alexis was named one of UTNE Reader’s 50 Visionaries Transforming the World in 2009, a Reproductive Reality Check Shero, and a Black Woman Rising nominee in 2010, and was awarded one of the first ever Too Sexy for 501c3 trophies in 2011! Alexis’s work as co-creator of the Mobile Homecoming experiential archive and documentary project has been featured in Curve magazine, the Huffington Post, in Durham Magazine and on NPR.
Alexis Pauline Gumbs guest-hosts The Laura Flanders Show and talks Revolutionary Mothering with China Martens, Mai’a Williams, Victoria Law and Cynthia Dewi Oka
Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines
SKU: 9781629631103
Edited: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams • Preface by Loretta J. Ross
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629631103
Published: 3/2016
Format: Paperback, mobi, ePub, PDF
Size: 6 x 9
Page count: 272
Subjects: Women’s Studies/Family-Parenting
Praise
“This collection is a treat for anyone that sees class and that needs
to learn more about the experiences of women of color (and who
doesn’t?!). There is no dogma here, just fresh ideas and women of color
taking on capitalism, anti-racist, anti-sexist theory-building that is
rooted in the most primal of human connections, the making of two people
from the body of one: mothering.”
—Barbara Jensen, author of Reading Classes: On Culture and Classism in America
“For women of color, mothering—the art of mothering—has been framed
by the most virulent systems, historically: enslavement, colonialism,
capitalism, imperialism. We have had few opportunities to define
mothering not only as an aspect of individual lives and choices, but as
the processes of love and as a way of structuring community. Revolutionary Mothering arrives as a needed balm.”
—Alexis De Veaux, author of Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde
“Although it is primarily written for mothers of all ages, the issues
that are raised—about family, love, struggle, sacrifice, and
acceptance—are universal as they speak to the revolutionary that exists
within all of us.”
—Karsonya Wise Whitehead, PhD, assistant
professor of communication and African and African American studies,
Loyola University Maryland
“Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines is juicy,
gutsy, vulnerable, and very brave. These women insist on having their
children in a society that does not welcome them, in a world that is
rapidly falling apart. Their dream for their children, based on their
love of them, encompasses the sorrow and the joy that mothers
everywhere, whether human, animal, or plant, feel at this time. A
radical vision, many radical visions of how to mother in a time of
resistance and of pain.”
—Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and activist
“This is the book for readers who know mothering is not just about a
baby and a mother or parents in an isolated suburban nursery, but that
mothering happens in a context of generations, a context of racial
history, and in a spiritual context; that it takes place from the shore
line to the front line, in times of scarcity and abundance; that it is
queer and love-filled. Here, revolution, love, and mothering are an
inseparable unity.”
—Faith Holsaert, coeditor of Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts of Women in SNCC
Book Events
april, 2024
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Reviews
- Revolutionary Mothering Reviewed on Literary Mama
- Revolutionary Mothering in The Journal of the Motherhood Initiative
- How to Understand Mother as a Verb This Mother’s Day and Always
- ‘Radical caretaking’: Poet, activist Mai’a Williams on building real communities
- 11 Must-Read Books About Black Women’s History
- It’s Your Heart, Don’t Let It Die
- Revolutionary Mothering in The Journal of the Motherhood Initiative
- Revolutionary Mothering in Novel Niche
- Revolutionary Mothering in Black Girl Dangerous
- Revolutionary Mothering in MRR
- How to Understand Mother as a Verb This Mother’s Day and Always
Interviews
- Writing New Worlds- A conversation curated by Alexis Pauline Gumbs @ Allied Media Conference
- Interview with coeditors of Revolutionary Mothering on Chicana M(other)work Podcast
- Revolutionary Mothering Editors on The Marc Steiner Show
- ‘Radical caretaking’: Poet, activist Mai’a Williams on building real communities
Mentions
- Revolutionary Mothering & This is How We Survive on BookRiot
- What writers of color say we all should read now: Revolutionary Mothering in the Star Tribune
- Williams Shares Writing