Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals

by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Instead, the intimacy, the intentional ambiguity about who is who, speaking to whom and when is about undoing a definition of the human, which is so tangled in separation and domination that it is consistently making our lives incompatible with the planet.

In 1741, a German naturalist “discovered” Hydrodamalis gigas swimming large and luxe, at least three times bigger than the contemporary manatee. Within twenty-seven years, the entire species was extinct, killed on thousands of European voyages for fur and sealskin. So she knows what we know. It is dangerous to be discovered.

How do we mourn and survive the violence of being known? How does capitalism so quickly destroy what took billions of years to evolve?

May anyone who seeks to mention you be called to learn the language of those who first loved you.

What struck me first was this sentence: “Several of the captives have gained renown as quick learners and creative performers.”

I am wondering if we could trade the image of “family” for the practice of school, a unit of care where we are learning and re-learning how to honor each other, how to go deep, how to take turns, how to find nourishing light again and again.

I do not commit to playing a permanent role in a structure designed for our infinite lack.

And my first marine mammal lesson was that if I breathe I can still speak even while crying. I can breathe through salt water.

I am still unlearning the coping mechanisms I created when I thought I was impossible within myself. And the equally harmful tactics I internalized when I believed the tokenizing myth that I was, and should be the only one of my kind. And now all I want is to breathe together. For we are real with a power beyond commodified magic

Know that for me your blood is a scripture. I want it to stay in your veins. I am saying your name. We’re not breathing in vain.