M ARCHIVE: BOOK REVIEW
There has been numerous works published speculating about the future and the eventual end of the world. For the most part, it’s all the same. It’s always a fear of technology, of ecological collapse, of AI, or some combination of them. It’s always about what it would look like for rich white people. Speculative fiction has become a predictable, formulaic genre. But, Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ M Archive helped me reimagine what the genre of speculative fiction and apocalyptic writing could be, and this work of art is anything but boring.
M Archive is a poetic book length work of speculative fiction. It’s a fictional documentation written from the point of view of a researcher analyzing artifacts from the end of the world, centering black life and culture. Every aspect of this work is unique, from the organization to the language. Even the point of view reimagines the genre of speculative fiction and our very future as a civilization.
The researcher’s notes are organized into sections. First, we encounter “From the Lab Notebooks of the Last Experiments,” which sets the stage for our exploration into the end of the world. We begin an interrogation into the conditions for this apocalypse. Most notably, the hatred of black women, “...they believed they had to hate black women in order to be themselves.” This idea of “they” brings up questions of identity and belonging. Do the black women hate themselves? Do others hate them? Does it matter to the narrative? I decided that the ambiguity of this statement was meant to point to this widespread hatred, something that Alexis Pauline Gumbs hopes to steer us away from with this poetic work.
Gumbs does not attempt to convince readers of the humanity of black people, but interrogates the idea of humanity itself. In the very beginning, this fictional researcher reminds the reader that, “...there was no ‘the people’ there were only people.” At times the subject is “we,” and the reader is directly implicated in the narrative. Sometimes the subject is “they,” some collective separate from the reader, but still inviting the reader to reflect on their potential for positive and negative involvement. At other times the subject is “she,” and we see the story from the perspective of one woman, but she still seems to represent a wider collective. This leads me to think about how black women are often called upon to represent an entire community, except it seems to be framed as empowering here. This woman is our view into a community that is intriguing yet elusive.
As we move into the four archives: “...of Dirt,” “...of Sky,” “...of Fire,” and “...of Ocean,” we continue to zoom in and out of a singular subject and a greater collective “we,” which is fitting, as the ocean features heavily throughout, and this interweaving of singular consciousness is reminiscent of the tides. In each of these sections, a particular element and its importance to blackness and society’s change throughout ecological collapse is highlighted, but other elements are still referenced. The earth does not only need dirt and sky, but also fire and oceans. Each of the elements holds a key to the survival of blackness and therefore of humanity itself. The survival of blackness and of humanity is inextricably linked. I thought this was a lovely and pertinent message. When thinking about how to prevent an apocalyptic event from spiraling into the end of the world, we need to think about how all the elements, earthly and otherwise, fit together. In this narrative however, “they mostly ignored those women. just like they ignored the world shaking around them.” In this instance, “those women” are black and brown women and “they” are people who hold bias against black and brown women. This passage calls attention to the earthly beauty of black women, which further implicates black women in signaling the ecological collapse. This rings true when considering current events as well. Black folks, specifically black women, are the first to feel the signs of societal and ecological instability, and they are also the ones who are ignored.
The earthly beauty of blackness is called back in “Archive of Sky,” this time in the context of the sky and the stars. The fictional researcher writes about a conversation between two beings, stating, “everyone knows we are made of stardust. they just don’t remember what it means.” In the later archives and other sections of the book, Alexis Pauline Gumbs looks to the past as a way to reimagine the future of blackness, humanity, and other forms of being. I find that to be one of the most powerful ways to write speculative fiction, because who is to say where the speculation should come from?
As the narrative progresses through the “Archive of Fire” and the “Archive of Ocean” and into the last two sections titled “Baskets” and “Memory Drive,” references to the societal and ecological unrest of today become more and more prevalent. Questions of identity, belonging, and safety are addressed as well. The world that Gumbs has imagined and brought us into becomes increasingly real, and it’s chilling. She won’t let us forget that police are shooting unarmed black and brown folks, or that climate change has had, and will continue to have, devastating effects on our planet. She won’t let us forget that every single day, people must make sacrifices, whether it’s to cross borders or just to exist within one. We see the fictional researcher’s optimism gradually slip away, and they state, “there did come a moment when the species was united on the planet as human, but it was not what anyone had dreamt. it was too late to truly benefit those of us who had been called alien.” This represents a real fear for black and brown people living in the U.S. and anyone who has been oppressed or made to feel lesser. What if, by the time we realize how oppressive our society is, it’s too little too late?