
the dej vu
black dreams & black time
Gabrielle Civil(Author)
Coffee House Press
Published on 7. April 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
240 pages
978-1-56689-622-1 (ISBN)
Description
Gabrielle Civil mines black dreams and black time to reveal a vibrant archive of black feminist creative expressions.
Emerging from the intersection of pandemic and uprising, the deja vu activates forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech, and lyric essay into performance memoir. As Civil considers Haitian tourist paintings, dance rituals, race at the movies, black feminist legacies, and more, she reflects on her personal losses and desires, speculates on black time, and dreams into expansive black life. With intimacy, humor, and verve, the deja vu blurs boundaries between memory, grief, and love; then, now, and the future.
Emerging from the intersection of pandemic and uprising, the deja vu activates forms both new and ancestral, drawing movement, speech, and lyric essay into performance memoir. As Civil considers Haitian tourist paintings, dance rituals, race at the movies, black feminist legacies, and more, she reflects on her personal losses and desires, speculates on black time, and dreams into expansive black life. With intimacy, humor, and verve, the deja vu blurs boundaries between memory, grief, and love; then, now, and the future.
Reviews / Votes
Praise for the deja vuA Poets & Writers New and Noteworthy Title
"[Civil's] musings act as a radical reclamation of place and identity, and challenge the 'pandemic of white supremacy.' The result is an evocative work of art that brings to life an era ripe for a revolution." -Publishers Weekly, starred review
"I count Civil as a trailblazer with my generation of writers committed to black feminist consciousness, as a fluid, genre busting, 'idiosyncratic' archive, dedicated to uncontained, vulgar, and shimmering cycles of curiosity." -Erica N. Cardwell, The Brooklyn Rail
"Each page of the deja vu opens up space by addressing time through dreams, memories, archived performances, and visitations to old writings with fresh eyes. . . . Her distinct voice and style rise from the page." -Amy Bobeda, Full Stop
"Gabrielle Civil continues to model generosity, bravery, and vulnerability as core principles of black feminist performance, creativity, and living. Read it for the beauty, the black feminist references. Read it for a particular herstory of this time. Look for what you might be unknowing right now and what you need urgently to remember." -Alexis Pauline Gumbs
"Civil soldiers for the possibility of black life to dream beyond the confines of colonialist rhetoric laden within modern world systems. Here, she asks the reader to think and experiment playfully with her as she skillfully complicates our time-dream-space continuum with new poetic knowledge." -jaamil olawale kosoko
"While the world insists that blackness exists only in the body, Gabrielle Civil shows us that black feminist consciousness extends well beyond any corporeal limitations. Affirming the power of black dreams and black time, the deja vu notes metaphysical links between the ancestors and the stars." -Wendy S. Walters
"This is the book I wish I'd had as an artist as a young woman. And it's the book I'll relish in sharing now. Performance studies has a new one for the mantel in this generous, funny, tender journey through the thicket and politic of Becoming." -Cauleen Smith, filmmaker
"Here, Gabrielle Civil has crafted a pedagogical model for writing performance art." -Alexis De Veaux, author of Yabo
"In all this plurality, Civil manages to deliver a kind of replete self-accounting, or auto-theory, in the deja vu. She goes deeper than ekphrasis or arts criticism, toward an experience that's closer to that of intimately living with, and within, the text of our culture." -Anais Duplan, author of Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture
"Roundly wise and rich with surprise. Civil inspires a life of love for the self, for others, for the human condition, as we follow hers, engaged in 'practice and play as human beings,' out of which Civil urges and instructs: 'Imagine an iridescent bubble around your head / This is your dreams happening now.'" -Ronaldo V. Wilson
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
MN
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
20 black and white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 208 mm
Width: 138 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-56689-622-1 (9781566896221)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
02/2022
Coffee House Press
€16.49
Available for download
Person
Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer originally from Detroit. She has premiered fifty performance artworks around the world. Her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish, Experiments in Joy, (ghost gestures), and in and out of place. She teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.