1st Edition
Introduction to Afrofuturism A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts
Introduction to Afrofuturism delivers a fresh and contemporary introduction to Afrofuturism, discussing key themes, understandings, and interdisciplinary topics across multiple genres in Black literature, film, and music. From Afrofuturism’s origins to the present, this critical volume features scholarly works, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction which illuminates on the contributions of notable Afrofuturists such as Octavia Bulter, Sun Ra, N.K. Jemisin, Janelle Monáe, Nnedi Okorafor, Saul Williams, Prince, and more. The volume highlights the impact of films such as Black Panther (2018, 2022), The Woman King (2022), and They Cloned Tyrone (2023) and covers a variety of essential topics giving students a comprehensive view of the legacy of storytelling and the tradition of “remixing” in Black literature and arts. This volume makes connections across academic subject areas and is an engaging reader for pop culture and media film studies, women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, Black and Africana studies, hip-hop studies, creative writing, and composition and rhetoric.
Introduction
PART I. Black Poetics, Creative Nonfiction, Drama & Prose
Chapter Abstract
1. CURTIS L. CRISLER
Last Stop to Dine
Looking for Hurston in a Triptych
Fifty Something Years of Letters Laters (my paradoxical absolution of Emmett Till)
The Automatism of Reflection on Creation and Space—a Triptych (featuring Alice Coltrane’s symphonic aura)
2. ZORINA EXIE FREY
I Heart Music: Hip-Hop is Dead. Long Live Hip-Hop
I’m a Black man wearing the stars and stripes, what don’t I understand?
3. RAN WALKER
Mason Dixon
The Multiverse of a Heart
A Soulful Meditation
4. ALAN KING
Cornbread Othello
5. RAINA J. LEȎN
poet: on imagining Planet X as the only safe space
Whispers and rockets
6. ARTHUR RICKYDOC FLOWERS, JR.
Afroprophetica: A Hoodoo Future
PART II. Black Music & Film
Chapter Abstract
7. PAUL YOUNGQUIST
Satellites are Spinning: Notes on a Sun Ra Poem
8. DUEWA M. FRAZIER
Juice from the Mind: Afrofuturism in Hip-Hop and Black Visual Culture
9. CHRISTIAN M. HINES
Young, Gifted, and Black: Exploring the Community Building of Science and Sisterhood in Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
10. JULIETTE GOUTIERRE
Hacking Boundaries and Subverting Systems of Oppression in Neptune Frost (2021)
11. DOUGLAS RASMUSSEN
“Heaven somewhere in the future”: The Digital imagination of Prince’s Art Official Age
12. JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN
My Life in The New Wave: On My Origins as A Black Fabulist
13. JEREMY LAUGHERY
“It’s Not What I See, But What I See Through”: Queer Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism in Neptune Frost (2021)
14. OLAYOMBO RAJI-OYELADE
Altering Normative Epistemologies in African Speculative Fiction: A Reading Of The Woman King (2022)
15. OLIVIA UZODIMA EKEH
I’m a Witness: Surviving Dystopia Through the Sonic Memory of Black Women in When I Get Home
16. SHERNĀ ANN PHILLIPS
In The Afro-Future, Even Jezebels Like ‘Yo-Yo’ Deserve to Be Saved: An Exploration of Black Female Characters in They Cloned Tyrone (2023)
PART III. Black Feminisms and Luminaries in Speculative Prose
Chapter Abstract
17. ANINDITA GHOSAL and ARITRA GHOSAL
Imag(in)ings Afrofuturistic Assemblages: Nurturing Multispecies Entanglement in Nnedi Okorofor’s Graphic narrative LaGuardia.
18. FLOURICE W. RICHARDSON
Exploring Afrofuturism as a Tool to Dismantle Hegemony in Octavia Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night”
19. HEATHER THAXTER
Seeing is believing: An Afrofuturist reading of the visual medium of Duffy and Jennings’s graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower.
20. AYANA HARDAWAY
Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars): Black Women & Ancient Wisdom
21. JADA SIMILTON
Demystifying the Speculative: An Ifa reading of Stigmata.
22. JASMINE H. WADE
Live and Let Live Black Feminism and Difference
23. KEISHA ALLAN
Verbal Marronage as Linguistic Resistance in Midnight Robber
24. MICHAEL RA-SHON HALL
How did I (We) Get Here?: Speculative Time Travel and the Contested Place of Technology in Afrofuturistic Fictions
25. VICTORIA MOTEN
Mother(ship) Intuition: Black Women Protagonists in Afrofuturism
26. AK WRIGHT
F.A.M: Trans-Afrofuturism in Janelle Monae’s and Danny Lore’s “Nevermind”
Reading, Writing, and Discussion Guide
Biography
DuEwa M. Frazier, EdD, MFA, is a poet, essayist, scholar, digital creator, TEDx and keynote speaker, and tenured Assistant Professor of English at Coppin State University, USA. Frazier’s research, creative nonfiction, and digital writings focus on hip-hop pedagogy and popular culture, culturally responsive pedagogy, Black women writers, and Blackfeminism. She is the editor of Teaching Humanities with Cultural Responsiveness at HBCUs and HSIs (2024). Her poetry has featured in Split This Rock/Blog This Rock, Water Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, Poetry in Performance, and others. She is the author of several published volumes of poetry and children’s stories. She has been a writing fellow at the Hurston/Wright Foundation and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She holds advanced degrees in Creative Writing, Curriculum and Teaching, and Higher Education Leadership. Frazier earned an MFA in Creative Writing at The New School, USA.
