Black Futures with Enclave Habitat Member: Jenna Wortham

Published December 1, 2020

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE - An archive of collective memory and exuberant testimony
A luminous map to navigate an opaque and disorienting present
An infinite geography of possible futures

What does it mean to be Black and alive right now?

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work--images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more--to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today. The book presents a succession of startling and beautiful pieces that generate an entrancing rhythm: Readers will go from conversations with activists and academics to memes and Instagram posts, from powerful essays to dazzling paintings and insightful infographics.

In answering the question of what it means to be Black and alive, Black Futures opens a prismatic vision of possibility for every reader.

(Source: bookshop.org)

The Lost Brother Alphabet with Enclave Habitat Member: Kathy Engel

Published 2020 by Get Fresh Books

Kathy Engel’s “The Lost Brother Alphabet” concerns itself with mortality or, more specifically, with the mystery of how we endure and what we become after those we love die. In Ms. Engel’s case, the loss of her father in his 80s and her brother’s suicide dominate her consciousness.

Ms. Engel never hides behind a persona; her loss and her grief are too personal, too powerful to obscure with a mask. She wants us to know that this is her experience, her existential struggle, which must somehow be overcome or transformed for her to live, and she lays bare her emotional response to it. The poems attempt to create meaning from loss, that quintessential human endeavor; they ask the questions that grief provokes. 

(Source: easthamptonstar.com)

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals with Enclave Habitat Member: Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Published November 17, 2020

Undrowned is a book-length meditation for the entire human species, based on the subversive and transformative lessons of marine mammals. Alexis Pauline Gumbs has spent hundreds of hours watching our aquatic cousins. She has found them to be queer, fierce, protective of each other, complex, shaped by conflict, and struggling to survive the extractive and militarized conditions humans have imposed on the ocean. Employing a brilliant mix of poetic sensibility, naturalist observation, and Black feminist insights, she translates their submerged wisdom to reveal what they might teach us. The result is a powerful work of creative nonfiction that produces not a specific agenda but an unfolding space for wonder and questioning.

(Source: akpress.org)

Spirit Desire: Resistance, Imagination and Sacred Memories in Haitian Vodoun with Enclave Habitat Member: Sokari Ekine

Published July 16, 2018

"Spirit Desire: – Resistance, Imagination and Sacred Memories in Haitian Vodoun”, is a celebration of Haitian Vodoun as a site of resistance, decolonization, and community. The series which includes images of everyday living, ritual, and ceremony, aims to shift the gaze from representations that depict Vodoun as negative and instead present a decolonizing narrative: one in which voduizɑ̃n engage with a consciousness and spirituality that celebrates our humanity rather than focusing on a set of prescribed normative identities.

(Source: sokariekine.me)