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M Archive: After the End of the World
Following the innovative collection Spill, Alexis Pauline Gumbs's M Archive—the second book in a planned experimental triptych—is a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following a worldwide cataclysm. Engaging with the work of the foundational Black feminist theorist M. Jacqui Alexander, and following the trajectory of Gumbs's acclaimed visionary fiction short story “Evidence,” M Archive is told from the perspective of a future researcher who uncovers evidence of the conditions of late capitalism, antiblackness, and environmental crisis while examining possibilities of being that exceed the human. By exploring how Black feminist theory is already after the end of the world, Gumbs reinscribes the possibilities and potentials of scholarship while demonstrating the impossibility of demarcating the lines between art, science, spirit, scholarship, and politics.
248 pages, Paperback
First published March 9, 2018
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1961 people want to read
About the author
Alexis Pauline Gumbs
30 books569 followersAlexis Pauline Gumbs is a poet, independent scholar, and activist. She is author of Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity and coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines and the Founder and Director of Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind, an educational program based in Durham, North Carolina.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews
August 3, 2018
I love this book. Surely it will be considered "speculative fiction", but it is also americoafropessimist, but also resignedly hopeful. It's rooted in the reality of our precarious positions as a species whose most powerful members are pushing us towards self-annihilation. I appreciate how she writes from a place beyond simple dichotomies of privileged vs. oppressed (although that has its place), and is speaking from what it means to have inherited centuries of trauma.
I consider this book a sacred text and because of the spiritual truths, which is why labelling it "speculative fiction" doesn't do the work any justice at all. It's also poetry, or "poetic prose", if we must.
This isn't a light read at all. It's very heavy--sometimes somber, but it really feels like being seen. I feel like this work was written very specifically for people like me--people who recognize the immensity of the trauma we have inherited, are determined/called to be lightworkers, have dreams that aren't limited by this life, this time, this body, or this planet.
But being that this is a work of linguistic art, it's likely that anyone with the mind to, would find something affirming, healing, or inspiring in this work.
I consider this book a sacred text and because of the spiritual truths, which is why labelling it "speculative fiction" doesn't do the work any justice at all. It's also poetry, or "poetic prose", if we must.
This isn't a light read at all. It's very heavy--sometimes somber, but it really feels like being seen. I feel like this work was written very specifically for people like me--people who recognize the immensity of the trauma we have inherited, are determined/called to be lightworkers, have dreams that aren't limited by this life, this time, this body, or this planet.
But being that this is a work of linguistic art, it's likely that anyone with the mind to, would find something affirming, healing, or inspiring in this work.
June 24, 2019
10 STARS I’M PASSED OUT
April 27, 2018
There are books that you read and there are books that read you. That weave in and out of your consciousness and help you to modify new truths. This book does that, but it does something more. It begins with another source and uses that space of searching and telling to tell another set of stories that meander though this archive of memory, discovery and destruction. The after holds quite a bit of mystery. And the story/poesis? A joyful and visceral journey.
July 31, 2019
M Archive: After the End of the World documents the afterlife of human-created climate crisis. At this point, earth has gone through several stages of freezing, flooding, torching heat, and sulfuric contamination. The book is narrated in second person by someone who has survived. This narrator/archivist shares notes, plans, and observations on all that happened.
M Archive can be read in many ways. It can read straight through, as a kaleidoscopic story told in sections, it can be read archive by archive (for example, 'Archive of Sky: What We Became'), it can be read by the page in poetic vignettes, and finally it can be read through the dense references and indices at the back of the book. Just try it.
I like thinking of M Archive as a deep sea conversation between the author, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and M. Jacqui Alexander. After all, the dedication of M Archive says the text is "after and with" Alexander's hallmark work Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Both texts combine an academic approach with speculative practice. Both are deeply concerned with how the sacred and material threads of the past interweave to create our futures. Finally, both cast their focus directly on black people and black women in particular.
This book made me think about
1. The way to survive is not always to fly up and away. It could be to go down, dig deep, and go inside.
2. The basket that holds water can also float.
3. How can the practice of speculative archiving help us plan for what we need to do in the future?
M Archive can be read in many ways. It can read straight through, as a kaleidoscopic story told in sections, it can be read archive by archive (for example, 'Archive of Sky: What We Became'), it can be read by the page in poetic vignettes, and finally it can be read through the dense references and indices at the back of the book. Just try it.
I like thinking of M Archive as a deep sea conversation between the author, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and M. Jacqui Alexander. After all, the dedication of M Archive says the text is "after and with" Alexander's hallmark work Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred. Both texts combine an academic approach with speculative practice. Both are deeply concerned with how the sacred and material threads of the past interweave to create our futures. Finally, both cast their focus directly on black people and black women in particular.
This book made me think about
1. The way to survive is not always to fly up and away. It could be to go down, dig deep, and go inside.
2. The basket that holds water can also float.
3. How can the practice of speculative archiving help us plan for what we need to do in the future?
July 18, 2018
An impressively original and boundary-rejecting vision. Gumbs blends poetry, mysticism, science fiction, politics, and rigorous theory into a surprisingly accessible collection of texts. She sharply takes on capitalism, antiblackness, and environmental crisis while offering acts of resistance and remembrance that feel both ancient and urgent.
January 10, 2021
i loved the afrofuturism and afropessimistic view this book takes on. This was a book that really got my imagination going and how it relates to this current dystopia we’re living through. This work is so original and I haven’t come across anything like it other than Octavia Butler’s writings. Highly recommend this book if you’re looking to read material that challenges and inspires you to think beyond what you’ve known to be reality.
January 11, 2020
This masterpiece is perhaps the most beautiful thing I've read about the intersections of race and the environment. Intersections of humanity and other elements. Touched by this book ❤️
December 18, 2019
I’m going to have to read this several more times to even begin to digest. But, wow.
November 7, 2021
This book totally shattered my ideas of what a book can be. The form breaks many traditional rules, and uses incredible diction and metaphor. The story doesn’t follow a clear narrative arch but is still so powerful and engaging. A necessary reminder that Black and Indigenous women bore this world and are some of the only ones still taking care of it.
June 27, 2025
I had trouble with this one. It is difficult to read without feeling the full weight of its anger and outrage. Of the legacy of colonialism, slavery, capitalism, war…it mourns our stupidity and weakness and laziness and ultimate alienation from each other and ourselves. What survives is rooted in embodiedness and kinship with the earth. There are moments that truly haunt me, indict me, and I’m not sure what to do with those feelings yet…
December 2, 2018
A grounding.
February 28, 2019
The first 5-10 pages, it felt like a dense advanced philosophical text, rich but hard work to read. The next 40-50 pages, I wondered if the format and grammar were pretentious, worth the work. Around page 75 or 80, I was hooked and swallowed up in the painting of mourning and hope. Well worth it!
Read
June 14, 2021Not rating / reviewing this as I very much skimmed through to see if it was going to be relevant for my research. Safe to say it is extremely expansive and beautifully written. Hopefully I can return to it with more time and energy as I didn't feel ready yet! But I think what is clear is that the singular human is no longer necessary x
March 5, 2021
Literally the best book I've ever read
July 6, 2024
Stunning, in thought and prose. Simultaneously a book about ancestral knowledge from black women, and the trans-Atlantic slave route, as well as about a deep future in which humans have adapted to live in the ocean. Contained within it are poetic critiques of late stage capitalism and Modernity.
March 12, 2024
There’s mourning to be done for what the world could have been without hate. I loved the sociopolitical commentary and expression of spirituality through a poetic, scientific lens.
December 31, 2024
A strange one, one I will return to.
April 2, 2018
I want to underline each line. I don't because I know I intend to reread it. A rich book that's accessible, as it is emotionally complex. Every time I tell someone I'm reading this book, they tell me about Spill--which I will read--I do hope they take the time to love Gumbs's work so much more given what she shares with us in this text.
September 19, 2020
Some passages from M Archive:
*
it hurt to move. it hurt to breathe. the food decline plateaued because it hurt so much to eat. and we were thick in our clothes for swelling. and when our eyes swole shut we couldn’t see. and then we finally saw. we saw it.
we hadn’t told the truth is so damn long.
*
at some point the work of pretending we weren’t going to die, that our children weren’t going to die, that our deaths and lives weren’t going to be forgotten, became unsustainable. it was hard enough to just breathe and metabolize. to find something to metabolize. to find people to metabolize near. now some people call it the true end of whiteness, when the world could finally operate based on something other than fear of blackness, of being, of death. but at the time all we knew was the story had run out. all the stories. of staying young to cheat death. of thinking young people wouldn’t die. of immortality via “making a difference.” of genetic imprint as stability. of stacking money and etching names on buildings. people used to do those things before. not to mention that they would not mention death and would hide the dying away and strive to protect the eyes of the children who already knew everything.
at some point. all the dead being here anyway and all of us here being obviously doomed, we let go of that particular game. and started breathing. and saw our hands.
we let go.
i felt like i could fly.
*
what we wanted was to want to. not to have to do anything. and the problem was we forgot after all these years of force what wanting was.
want was not getting, nor was it having. wanting was not needing. wanting was not having to have or needing not to need. it was not. and there was a wideness in wanting that didn’t quite fold in on itself. it deepened and rose up and radiated out and touched softly to itself with warm warning.
*
not knowing when made them reckless in their trust and irresponsible in their love attempts.
*
we questioned the end point of evolution when we noticed it wasn’t us.
*
so she happened to remember the time of the surface people who had hated and manipulated depth in their vain attempt to accept death. how they had blown the peaks off of mountains like this to dig out the darkness they couldn’t find in themselves. how they had blasted into the ground threatening all the underneath water to frack out the darkness they couldn’t trust in themselves. the surface people, she inhaled and exhaled, who blew a hole in the sky as big as what they were unwilling to know.
*
that was the challenge. to create oneself anew on a regular basis. it started with every seven years (also called the new cell cycle) and accelerated for the talented. to every three years, every year, every season, every month, every day until the prestige came from re-creating a self unrecognizable (to both your former self and the expectations of others) multiple times in any given day. they said it was towards the evolution of the community. a community that could not depend on previous expectation would have to evolve new needs. their individual shapeshifting was towards less collective dependence on a former world. let the new world meet us faster where we are! the people sometimes said to affirm a particularly brave invention.
they went from mostly not knowing their neighbors to perpetually not knowing themselves. which seemed more useful. and like the rare urban neighbor with the time to watch their transforming neighbors walk in and out their doors differently every day, the social media applications were even more useful for creating narrative out of the random moments of self-documentation offered by the digitally literate.
maybe that’s where they went wrong. the watching. because at some point the point changed from transforming need and evolving skills to performing further and further newness. as if novelty itself was the measure and the outcome and the point again. and eventually it distilled down to the same people looking different every day and going to the same places they always went just to provoke contrast and doing the same things they always did (eventually just the work of looking for and financing new costumes). so the challenge was called off around the time when it got most boring.
it wasn’t worth the use of fossil fuels.
*
it hurt to move. it hurt to breathe. the food decline plateaued because it hurt so much to eat. and we were thick in our clothes for swelling. and when our eyes swole shut we couldn’t see. and then we finally saw. we saw it.
we hadn’t told the truth is so damn long.
*
at some point the work of pretending we weren’t going to die, that our children weren’t going to die, that our deaths and lives weren’t going to be forgotten, became unsustainable. it was hard enough to just breathe and metabolize. to find something to metabolize. to find people to metabolize near. now some people call it the true end of whiteness, when the world could finally operate based on something other than fear of blackness, of being, of death. but at the time all we knew was the story had run out. all the stories. of staying young to cheat death. of thinking young people wouldn’t die. of immortality via “making a difference.” of genetic imprint as stability. of stacking money and etching names on buildings. people used to do those things before. not to mention that they would not mention death and would hide the dying away and strive to protect the eyes of the children who already knew everything.
at some point. all the dead being here anyway and all of us here being obviously doomed, we let go of that particular game. and started breathing. and saw our hands.
we let go.
i felt like i could fly.
*
what we wanted was to want to. not to have to do anything. and the problem was we forgot after all these years of force what wanting was.
want was not getting, nor was it having. wanting was not needing. wanting was not having to have or needing not to need. it was not. and there was a wideness in wanting that didn’t quite fold in on itself. it deepened and rose up and radiated out and touched softly to itself with warm warning.
*
not knowing when made them reckless in their trust and irresponsible in their love attempts.
*
we questioned the end point of evolution when we noticed it wasn’t us.
*
so she happened to remember the time of the surface people who had hated and manipulated depth in their vain attempt to accept death. how they had blown the peaks off of mountains like this to dig out the darkness they couldn’t find in themselves. how they had blasted into the ground threatening all the underneath water to frack out the darkness they couldn’t trust in themselves. the surface people, she inhaled and exhaled, who blew a hole in the sky as big as what they were unwilling to know.
*
that was the challenge. to create oneself anew on a regular basis. it started with every seven years (also called the new cell cycle) and accelerated for the talented. to every three years, every year, every season, every month, every day until the prestige came from re-creating a self unrecognizable (to both your former self and the expectations of others) multiple times in any given day. they said it was towards the evolution of the community. a community that could not depend on previous expectation would have to evolve new needs. their individual shapeshifting was towards less collective dependence on a former world. let the new world meet us faster where we are! the people sometimes said to affirm a particularly brave invention.
they went from mostly not knowing their neighbors to perpetually not knowing themselves. which seemed more useful. and like the rare urban neighbor with the time to watch their transforming neighbors walk in and out their doors differently every day, the social media applications were even more useful for creating narrative out of the random moments of self-documentation offered by the digitally literate.
maybe that’s where they went wrong. the watching. because at some point the point changed from transforming need and evolving skills to performing further and further newness. as if novelty itself was the measure and the outcome and the point again. and eventually it distilled down to the same people looking different every day and going to the same places they always went just to provoke contrast and doing the same things they always did (eventually just the work of looking for and financing new costumes). so the challenge was called off around the time when it got most boring.
it wasn’t worth the use of fossil fuels.
May 4, 2023
M Archive: After the End of the World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a stunning collection of poetry. Inspired by M. Jacqui Alexander's Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics, Memory, and the Sacred, a transnational black feminist text, Gumbs envisions humanity at the end of the world. While there is struggle, this is not the typical depiction of humanity as viciously and violently struggling for survival, but a vision of humanity as transformational. As the environment and world shifts (due to human causes), humanity takes to the dirt, sky, fire, and sea, creating new communities and ways of being. It's a beautiful, compelling and hopeful depiction.
"most of us got there naked, burnt, raw with rashes, scarred. we had put down everything that didn't hold blood and some parts of us that did. we had brushed agains the jagged histories that forced us to travel our different ways out."
— from "Archive of Sky" p. 78
"there was never rain. but she waited for lighting to find her. the mercury of her veins aligning with the shock of being here after everything and before whatever. her heart was accelerated coal, growing deep dark and sharp. she kept on breathing, prostrate, burning, knowing soon it would be clear and unbreakable. her beautiful blackening heart."
— from "Archive of Fire" p. 91
"she had a self sharpening spirit. that's how she would describe it afterward. everything that happened rubbed against her right in the middle until you could see her glint when she smiled."
— from "Memory Drive" p. 188
"most of us got there naked, burnt, raw with rashes, scarred. we had put down everything that didn't hold blood and some parts of us that did. we had brushed agains the jagged histories that forced us to travel our different ways out."
— from "Archive of Sky" p. 78
"there was never rain. but she waited for lighting to find her. the mercury of her veins aligning with the shock of being here after everything and before whatever. her heart was accelerated coal, growing deep dark and sharp. she kept on breathing, prostrate, burning, knowing soon it would be clear and unbreakable. her beautiful blackening heart."
— from "Archive of Fire" p. 91
"she had a self sharpening spirit. that's how she would describe it afterward. everything that happened rubbed against her right in the middle until you could see her glint when she smiled."
— from "Memory Drive" p. 188
May 17, 2020
I wasn't sure if I was going to connect with this book going into it, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed reading it. Disclaimer: I picked this book up as part of a women's literature class for University. This book is a strange yet perfect mix of Scifi, poetry, and black feminist theory. I read and enjoy Scifi novels but poetry and feminism, in general, are new to me. The book has no singular narrative that holds all the vignettes together, but there are a handful of central themes that connect all the passages. I wouldn't recommend going into this book expecting a plot, because I don't think there is a plot. Instead, I would recommend paying attention to language and theming.
I think this novel is a good introduction to poetry and black feminism if you're more familiar with Scifi. But this book is a good introduction to Scifi if you're more familiar with poetry and/or feminism. I highly recommend!!
I think this novel is a good introduction to poetry and black feminism if you're more familiar with Scifi. But this book is a good introduction to Scifi if you're more familiar with poetry and/or feminism. I highly recommend!!
November 29, 2022
This work is so different from anything I have read and so powerfully written that it is hard to really synopsize. The author refers to the work as speculative documentary and this conceit already sets it apart from many other works out there. One of the things that really struck me are the many imaginative ways the author connects the physical body to the natural world, including the universe. The holistic conception of our place in the world moves beyond all the superficial structures we have created such as economic systems and material interdependence that we think might give meaning to our lives, but are in reality fragile, cannot last and cannot begin to explain the depths of our being. Like any great works of art, this deserves returning to again and again to excavate more of its brilliance.
November 3, 2025
“remember when we met? underwater weightless and flowering. remember when we laced fingers or didn’t based on tides or passing whales. remember how our breathing turned into what would support us and everything else in the thousand-mile radius of echo. and how our heartbeats were no different than this ocean pulled by moon? remember that the whole planet was the ocean. everywhere you’ve been. that desert valley was the bottom of the deep where something sentient used to swim. and every grain of sand and mineral and currently growing tree is breathing in the ghost of ocean, the infinite face of the deep. how do you think you know how to breathe and be pulled by the moon? and the ocean.”
May 6, 2020
From the journal entries to the poetic nature of this work, I was left spinning in thoughts and ideas. This book is haunting to read at this time (coronavirus / the fall of late stage capitalism we are witnessing). I see where we are in time in this book and what we are moving into. This isn’t just some sci-fi tale, this is the life we’ve been living and what will be of us if we continue on this path. A very timely book for anyone living through this era.
August 4, 2020
I feel like I have been cracked wide open. Such a brilliant, brilliant writer. This won't be my last time reading this book or this stunning author.
"anything they wanted to know about the earth and what would happen if they ignored it, they could have learned by watching the old, curved brown women everywhere. but mostly they ignored those women. just like they ignored the world shaking around them. to their doom."
"anything they wanted to know about the earth and what would happen if they ignored it, they could have learned by watching the old, curved brown women everywhere. but mostly they ignored those women. just like they ignored the world shaking around them. to their doom."
April 11, 2022
I don't know how to say this in a way that makes it sound like a good thing, but honestly didn't understand a lot of this which I feel like is the point, but I got a lot of vibes from the book and it moved me a lot emotionally. Also, parts of it made me feel really inspired, plus I appreciate that the language is simple even though the content is hard to understand.
I always have a hard time with poetry but this was an enjoyable read and i might actually reread it.
I always have a hard time with poetry but this was an enjoyable read and i might actually reread it.
August 30, 2025
“when we personally couldn’t get out of bed, dehydrated with crying. when we didn’t ask for help. when we hurt the people we loved. when the sun died. when we lost everything. when we lost exactly who we needed to save. when we knew there would be no tomorrow. what did we each do then? how did we keep breathing past it (because we are the ones that did). they dug for those memories and stacked them in a row.
that’s how. that’s how we learned to get through this.”
Archive of Dirt
that’s how. that’s how we learned to get through this.”
Archive of Dirt
January 4, 2024
Amazing…
“… it meant everything at once
it meant once there was water
it meant once there was birth and a possible birth
it meant there were ancestors
and that someone had survived
it meant life was precious and could spill
it meant spirit was sticky
and could stay
and actually that all I was trying to say.”
“… it meant everything at once
it meant once there was water
it meant once there was birth and a possible birth
it meant there were ancestors
and that someone had survived
it meant life was precious and could spill
it meant spirit was sticky
and could stay
and actually that all I was trying to say.”
February 14, 2022
This book is incredible, how Gumbs imagines an anthropogenic world in late capitalism while infusing so much trans-Atlantic discourse is profound. I feel so honoured to have had the chance to read this.
November 23, 2024
I thought the audiobook was terrible which affected my enjoyment of this book. Would like to read it again in another format (kindle, physical book). I appreciated what it was doing but the audio narration fell flat.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 57 reviews