A review by robinks
Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

challenging medium-paced

5.0

I really enjoyed this collection, not having read Hortense Spillers’s work that these poems are a response to. The imagery and mouthfeel of each line is so bold, and I liked the variation in the styles. I especially loved “an element of radical waywardness,” “It would appear reactionary, if not dumb, to insist on the integrity of female/male gender,” “daughters have their own agenda,” “a network of feeling, of continuity,” “an open school of realism,” “glitters with a notion of black disobedience,” “This is the domain of invisibility,” “a startling moment of mutual revelation,” “and perhaps that really is enough,” “that point at which the make-up rolls away,” and “having forgotten to count.”  My only critique is that having the notes in the back and not printed above or alongside each of the poems meant I was flipping back and forth constantly, but it wasn’t enough of a deterrent for me to rate this any lower than 5 stars.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence, Child death, Blood, and Domestic abuse

Minor: Child abuse, Pregnancy, Slavery, and Gun violence