I thoroughly enjoy the author's writing style; the way they blend poetry with story-telling with scientific jargon with meditativeness. Still, the overall theme never managed to catch my interest. I finished the book, but not very excitedly ( )

Jury's still out on star ratings (and this may be one of those books that just doesn't work with this sort of system), but I was gratified to see that Undrowned found a publisher that let it be (I assume) exactly what it wanted to be.

Undrowned is an intriguing title. Alexis Gumbs has a wonderfully deep knowledge of sea mammals, and this book is meant to be anthropomorphic; how those mammals duplicate or inspire human equivalent activities. How we can or maybe even should see ourselves in the activities of sea mammals. It doesn’t work.

The 20 short chapters take activities and aspects of sea mammals and project them onto humans. For example, Gumbs talks about dorsal fins and how they aid in stability for dolphins and other sea mammals. She says she would like to have a dorsal fin stabilizing her life. It is dorsal fin envy, but so what?

Gumbs is very up front about herself: queer, black, feminist, Caribbean. I really wanted her to leverage those things into an entirely new perspective. But it didn’t work. Even when she specifically sets up a chapter on feminism or race, the comparison to the sea mammal world is empty. Nothing she says doesn’t also apply to everyone. Or to no one. The connections to being black, queer and feminist are never made, unless you count the dolphins who buddy up with a same sex friend for life. Best friend for life is not evidence of sea mammals being queer or serving as a lesson for humans.

For a brief moment, it appeared she was going to dive deep: “Legally and narratively, our society encourages small, isolated family units and anti-social state reluctant to care.” But she leaves that thought dangling and does not elaborate. Some sea mammals collectivize. Some mothers adopt orphans and even develop lactation for them. And so…?

Her knowledge of the very many different kinds of dolphins alone is inspiring. The facts she puts on display about how they live is a wonder. But she never leverages them into being black, feminist or queer. While knowledge of sea mammals is profound, her display of societal ills is naïve by comparison. And for all the physical descriptions, the book offers not a single image to show readers what she is referring to.

Instead, there is a lot of the word love. Gumbs loves readers and she wants them to know that, firmly, explicitly and repeatedly. And unnecessarily.

I came away not knowing what the point of it all was, and I cannot say who the book is directed to. To me, that is a failure.

David Wineberg ( )