Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity by Alexis Pauline (review)

Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity makes an important intervention in a diasporic conversation about black women's fugitivity by exploring the linkages between historical trauma and possibilities of being in the present and in the future. Gumbs's collection of poetry is a conversation with Hortense Spillers and her anthology of essays Black, White, and in Color: Essays on American Literature and Culture, a conversation that spills beyond the pages of the book into other physical and intellectual spaces. Gumbs does not set out to write about black feminist thinkers but rather with them. She deemphasizes the monograph as the primary medium of intellectual engagement and draws on other modes of expression employed by theorists such as Jacqui Alexander and Sylvia Wynter to imagine more transformative ways of engaging in collective dialogue. The distinction between writing about and writing with rethinks the relationship of power between writer and subject, writer and reader. This text is yet another reminder to read, think, and converse with "black women who made and broke narrative" (Gumbs, xii).