Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction's Newest New-Wave Trajectory

by Marlene S. Barr (Editor)

Overview

Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction's Newest New-Wave Trajectory, edited by Marleen S. Barr, is the first combined science fiction critical anthology and short story collection to focus upon black women via written and visual texts. The volume creates a dialogue with existing theories of Afro-Futurism in order to generate fresh ideas about how to apply race to science fiction studies in terms of gender. The contributors, including Hortense Spillers, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia E. Butler, and Steven Barnes, formulate a woman-centered Afro-Futurism by repositioning previously excluded fiction to redefine science fiction as a broader fantastic endeavor. They articulate a platform for scholars to mount a vigorous argument in favor of redefining science fiction to encompass varieties of fantastic writing and, therefore, to include a range of black women's writing that would otherwise be excluded. Afro-Future Females builds upon Barr's previous work in black science fiction and fills a gap in the literature. It is the first critical anthology to address the "blackness" of outer space fiction in terms of feminism, emphasizing that it is necessary to revise the very nature of a genre that has been constructed in such a way as to exclude its new black participants. Black science fiction writers alter genre conventions to change how we read and define science fiction itself. The work's main point: black science fiction is the most exciting literature of the nascent twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814255056
Publisher:	Ohio State University Press
Publication date:	07/13/2018
Edition description:	1
Pages:	257
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marleen S. Barr is a science fiction pioneer who broke new ground in feminist science fiction criticism with her book Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory. She won the Science Fiction Research Association Pilgrim Award for Lifetime Achievement in science fiction criticism.

Table of Contents

Preface: "All At One Point" Conveys the Point, Period: Or, Black Science Fiction Is Bursting Out All Over     ix
Introductions: "Dark Matter" Matters
Imaginative Encounters   Hortense J. Spillers     3
Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0   Mark Dery     6
"On the Other Side of the Glass": The Television Roots of Black Science Fiction   Marleen S. Barr     14
Essays: The Blackness of Outer Space Fiction as Blast(off) from the Past
Becoming Animal in Black Women's Science Fiction   Madhu Dubey     31
"God Is Change": Persuasion and Pragmatic Utopianism in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed Novels   Ellen Peel     52
Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson Revisit the Reproduction of Mothering: Legacies of the Past and Strategies for the Future   Alcena Madeline Davis Rogan     75
Close Encounters between Traditional and Nontraditional Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Gayl Jones's Corregidora Sing the Time Travel Blues   Jennifer E. Henton     100
Beyond the History We Know: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Nisi Shawl, and Jarla Tangh Rethink Science Fiction Tradition   De Witt Douglas Kilgore     119
Responses to De Witt Douglas Kilgore Bubbling Champagne Power Trip   Nisi Shawl     130
"Of Course People Can Fly"   Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu     131
Carla Johnson/Jarla Tangh: A Close Encounter with My Pseudonym   Jarla Tangh     132
Stories: Techno/Magic Sistahs Are Not the Sistahs from Another Planet
The Book of Martha   Octavia E. Butler     135
Double Consciousness   Andrea Hairston     151
Dynamo Hum   Nisi Shawl     158
The Ferryman   Sheree R. Thomas     167
Herbal   Nalo Hopkinson     174
Commentaries: Kindred Spirit
On Octavia E. Butler   Tananarive Due     179
Can a Brother Get Some Love? Sociobiology in Images of African-American Sensuality in Contemporary Cinema: Or, Why We'd Better the Hell Claim Vin Diesel as Our Own   Steven Barnes     182
A Conversation with Samuel R. Delany about Sex, Gender, Race, Writing-and Science Fiction   Samuel R. Delany   Carl Freedman     191
Black "Science Faction": An Interview with Kevin Willmott, Director and Writer of CSA, The Confederate States of America   Kevin Willmott   Marleen S. Barr     236
Octavia's Healing Power: A Tribute to the Late Great Octavia E. Butler   Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu     241
Afterword: The Big Bang: Or, the Inception of Scholarship about Black Women Science Fiction Writers   Marleen S. Barr     245
Response to the Afterword: Connecting Metamorphoses: Italo Calvino's Mrs. Ph(i)NKo and I, Dr. Ph(d)SalvagGlo   Ruth Salvaggio     249
Notes on Contributors     251