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OverviewWhen your stories flow from the brackish waters of the Gulf South, where the land and water merge, your narratives cannot be contained or constrained by the Eurocentric conventions of autobiography. When your story is rooted in the histories of your West African, Creek, and Creole ancestors, as well as your Black, feminist, and queer communities, you must create a biomythography that transcends linear time and extends beyond the pages of a book. Biomythography Bayou is more than just a book of memoir; it is a ritual for conjuring queer embodied knowledges and decolonial perspectives. Blending a rich gumbo of genres—from ingredients such as praise songs, folk tales, recipes, incantations, and invocations—it also includes a multimedia component, with “bayou tableau” images and audio recording links. Inspired by such writers as Audre Lorde, Zora Neale Hurston, and Octavia Butler, Mel Michelle Lewis draws from the well of her ancestors in order to chart a course toward healing Afrofutures. Showcasing the nature, folklore, dialect, foodways, music, and art of the Gulf’s coastal communities, Lewis finds poetic ways to celebrate their power and wisdom. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Mel Michelle LewisPublisher: Bucknell University Press,U.S. Imprint: Bucknell University Press,U.S. Dimensions: Width: 14.00cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 21.60cm Weight: 0.399kg ISBN: 9781684484829ISBN 10: 1684484820 Pages: 214 Publication Date: 11 October 2024 Recommended Age: From 18 to 99 years Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General , Tertiary & Higher Education Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print  This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Land and Labor Acknowledgment Conjure Portal Part 1: Water Elemental Essay: Water Catfish Mardi Gras Queen Bayou Honeyman Water Recipe Praise Song for Blue Crab Part 2: Fire Elemental Essay: Fire Tongues of Fire Twin Flames on the Other Side of Fire Ashy Ceasefire Jazz Fired Part 3: Earth Elemental Essay: Earth Praise Song for the Road Home What on Earth Erosion Who Got the Body? Part 4: Mineral Elemental Essay: Mineral Salt Red Clay Recipe Indian Shell Mound Park Oyster Shuck Part 5: Nature Elemental Essay: Nature Spell for a Bee Thunder Cake Nature Preserve Estuary Storm Warning Return Portal Notes Bibliography IndexReviews"""In Biomythography Bayou, Mel Michelle Lewis renders a compelling literary gumbo with which to read across the mix of multiple theories of knowledge, including those found in autobiography, folk traditions, black feminist praxis, poetry, scholarship, nature, photography, and black queer studies. Beneath it all, the question emerges: where did the conversation around black futurity begin? In our mothers' mouths, in our ancestors' breath, in the demand between not what is but what is possible? Written in language both erudite and of the folk, Biomythography Bayou invites more expansive engagement with Saidiya Hartman's 'critical fabulations' and Toni Morrison's 'literary archaeology.'"" -- Alexis De Veaux * author of JesusDevil: The Parables * “Biomythography Bayou is a stunningly beautiful medicinal offering that I did not know I needed. The recipes, story-telling, poetry, and honoring of origin, memory, and ancestry are profoundly compelling. I could not put this book down. Take your time, savor, and surrender to the magic of Mel Michelle Lewis.” -- gina Breedlove * author of The Vibration of Grace: Sound Healing Rituals for Liberation * “This innovative and tender manuscript is an absolute pleasure to read. Sensually Southern, fem(me)ininely curving, and rhythmically grounded, Biomythography Bayou is an everyday praise song to Black queer spirit and the landscapes that raise us.” -- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley * author of Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders * “Biomythography Bayou is a beautiful assembly and chorus of experimental prose that evocatively explores kinship, a region, ecologies, Black queer longing, and politics. It is an elegant and spirit-filled work that summons and communes with ancestors and the living who continue to quilt a Black lesbian and queer writing tradition. Biomythography Bayou experiments with and bends form in ways that invite and inspire more innovation. This work is a stunning contribution to Black lesbian and queer southern and diasporic writing.” -- Tiffany Lethabo King * author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies * “Lewis’ Biomythography Bayou is an explosive dance party of culture, identity, and word magic, and above all, it is a truth-telling serum. A balm for generations lost and those voices unheard, this is a project that celebrates, contests, and frames family and legacy in a decolonial context that breathes new life into the waterways and bayous of the Gulf Coast. From Louisiana to Baltimore, readers will be on a multi-dimensional journey to rootedness in land, healing, and cultural recovery. A powerful work that sits alongside a growing collection and chorus of voices, artists, and scholars reweaving Creole Indigenous, African Indigenous, and queer-Afro-Indigenous lifeways. A must-read!” -- Andrew Jolivétte * author of Gumbo Circuitry: Poetic Routes, Gastronomic Legacies *" “Biomythography Bayou is a stunningly beautiful medicinal offering that I did not know I needed. The recipes, story-telling, poetry, and honoring of origin, memory, and ancestry are profoundly compelling. I could not put this book down. Take your time, savor, and surrender to the magic of Mel Michelle Lewis.” -- gina Breedlove * author of The Vibration of Grace: Sound Healing Rituals for Liberation * “This innovative and tender manuscript is an absolute pleasure to read. Sensually Southern, fem(me)ininely curving, and rhythmically grounded, Biomythography Bayou is an everyday praise song to Black queer spirit and the landscapes that raise us.” -- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley * author of Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders * “Biomythography Bayou is a beautiful assembly and chorus of experimental prose that evocatively explores kinship, a region, ecologies, Black queer longing, and politics. It is an elegant and spirit-filled work that summons and communes with ancestors and the living who continue to quilt a Black lesbian and queer writing tradition. Biomythography Bayou experiments with and bends form in ways that invite and inspire more innovation. This work is a stunning contribution to Black lesbian and queer southern and diasporic writing.” -- Tiffany Lethabo King * author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies * “Lewis’ Biomythography Bayou is an explosive dance party of culture, identity, and word magic, and above all, it is a truth-telling serum. A balm for generations lost and those voices unheard, this is a project that celebrates, contests, and frames family and legacy in a decolonial context that breathes new life into the waterways and bayous of the Gulf Coast. From Louisiana to Baltimore, readers will be on a multi-dimensional journey to rootedness in land, healing, and cultural recovery. A powerful work that sits alongside a growing collection and chorus of voices, artists, and scholars reweaving Creole Indigenous, African Indigenous, and queer-Afro-Indigenous lifeways. A must-read!” -- Andrew Jolivétte * author of Gumbo Circuitry: Poetic Routes, Gastronomic Legacies * “Biomythography Bayou is a stunningly beautiful medicinal offering that I did not know I needed. The recipes, story-telling, poetry, and honoring of origin, memory, and ancestry is profoundly compelling. I could not put this book down. Take your time, savor, and surrender to the magic of Mel Michelle Lewis.” -- gina Breedlove * author of The Vibration of Grace: Sound Healing Rituals for Liberation * “This innovative and tender manuscript is an absolute pleasure to read. Sensually Southern, fem(me)ininely curving, and rhythmically grounded, Biomythography Bayou is an everyday praise song to Black queer spirit and the landscapes that raise us.” -- Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley * author of Ezili’s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders * “Biomythography Bayou is a beautiful assembly and chorus of experimental prose that evocatively explores kinship, a region, ecologies, Black queer longing, and politics. It is an elegant and spirit-filled work that summons and communes with ancestors and the living who continue to quilt a Black lesbian and queer writing tradition. Biomythography Bayou experiments with and bends form in ways that invite and inspire more innovation. This work is a stunning contribution to Black lesbian and queer southern and diasporic writing.” -- Tiffany Lethabo King * author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies * “Lewis’ Biomythography Bayou is an explosive dance party of culture, identity, and word magic, and above all, it is a truth-telling serum. A balm for generations lost and those voices unheard, this is a project that celebrates, contests, and frames family and legacy in a decolonial context that breathes new life into the waterways and bayous of the Gulf Coast. From Louisiana to Baltimore, readers will be on a multi-dimensional journey to rootedness in land, healing, and cultural recovery. A powerful work that sits alongside a growing collection and chorus of voices, artists, and scholars reweaving Creole Indigenous, African Indigenous, and queer-Afro-Indigenous lifeways. A must-read!” -- Andrew Jolivétte * author of Gumbo Circuitry: Poetic Routes, Gastronomic Legacies * Author InformationMEL MICHELLE LEWIS (she/they), vice president for people, justice, and cultural affairs at American Rivers, is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, teacher, and environmental justice practitioner and an affiliated researcher with the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally from Bayou la Batre on the Alabama Gulf Coast, they currently reside in Baltimore. Read more here: melmichellelewis.com Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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