Reverberations of the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus

Abstract

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a writer, poet, activist, and independent scholar whose experimental triptych (Spill, M Archive, Dub) offers both mundane and unearthly interventions for humanity’s struggles against histories of ecological extraction and Black feminist refusals. Sangodare is a multimedia artist, musician, and theologian drawing from Black feminist writings and African Diaspora wisdom. They are co-founders of several multi-platform undertakings such as the Mobile Homecoming Project that birthed the Black Feminist Breathing Chorus (BFBC). It is one of many online and in-person spaces supporting QPOC and Black feminist communities. The BFBC, in particular, blends theory, meditation, music, poetics, and Black church traditions. In this asynchronous mantra practice, hundreds of participants receive daily “ancestor” mantras via the Mobilehomecoming.org website. These mantras are shortened quotes from the diverse writings and speeches of figures such as Marsha P. Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Pat Parker, and Joseph Beam. The social, juridical, and digital records of violence against women, POC, queer, and non-binary bodies and communities is not new. However, as consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic have overlapped with conspicuous displays of anti-Black policing and asymmetric economies, the BFBC has provided an alternative space to rebuild and re-enchant social, political, and intellectual life through a remixed spiritual practice of amplifying voices. This interview highlights how race, gender, location, and time do not limit the quest for freedom. Thus, the primacy of Black queer positionality is instrumental in the chorus’s examination of both liberating and oppressive social hierarchies.