Undrowned is a book-length meditation for social movements and our whole species based on the subversive and transformative guidance of marine mammals. Our aquatic cousins are queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions our species has imposed on the ocean. Gumbs employs a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility and naturalist observation to show what they might teach us, producing not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wondering and questioning. From the relationship between the endangered North Atlantic Right Whale and Gumbs’s Shinnecock and enslaved ancestors to the ways echolocation changes our understandings of “vision” and visionary action, this is a masterful use of metaphor and natural models in the service of social justice.
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NEC's view
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals is unlike any other book we’ve read. Alexis Pauline Gumbs takes the lives and survival strategies of marine mammals and turns them into lessons in care, endurance, and collective wisdom.
What we found powerful is how the book moves between natural history and Black feminist thought with ease, creating a form of writing that is both poetic and political. It made us think differently about kinship, resilience, and what it means to live in relation with others, human and more-than-human alike.
