More Than an Ocean (Reflections of a Diasporic Daughter)

More Than an Ocean brings together over two decades of thoughtful, experimental writings in Black feminist diasporic practice by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. These essays, letters, poems, and meditations question the terms of Black diaspora across geography and generations. The collected works range from some of her earliest critical engagements with the scholars who have shaped her inquiry since graduate school, including Dionne Brand and Audre Lorde, to her most recent critical writings, to letters she’s exchanged with Christina Sharpe, Torkwase Dyson, and others. In all stages, Gumbs challenges traditional tenets of Black Studies, centering the Caribbean as a nodal point of the Black diaspora and placing Black women at the center of intellectual history, artistic communities, and political movements. By transversing form and discipline, More Than an Ocean paints an image not only of a Black queer feminist thinker but of what is possible in the work of inquiry and solidarity across differences and intimacies.