February's in the air, and there's so much to share! With one month down from the twelve, this is the time to plunge into the gruelling. Some determination and a song, and we're in here for a futuristic genre! So... follow along.
Coined by Mark Dery in his essay "Black to the future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose," in 1994, this term has been a part of black popular culture way long before the African diaspora combined science, technology, with philosophy. In a way, Afrofuturism is the means by which Black people create and develop new concepts to build a future of our own. For those who've just stumbled upon this genre, exploring Afrofuturism might come across as a daunting task. This article delves for those who desire to wet their feet into the expanse of the Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism genre seas.
For the interested, Africanfuturism--term coined by Nnedi Okorafor, "is concerned with visions of the future, is interested in technology, leaves the earth, skews optimistic, is centered on and predominantly written by people of African descent (black people) and it is rooted first and foremost in Africa".
Afrofuturism, on the other hand, as defined by the scholar Ytasha Womack is "an intersection of the imagination, technology, the future, and liberation".
There are many similar threads running between these two genres. The first (and main distinction) would be that while Africanfuturism is rooted in Africa, Afrofuturism includes and celebrates not only the Africans in African society, but also African Americans in western society.
In her book "Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture", Ytasha L. Womack, defines it as "an intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation", followed up with a quote by the curator Ingrid LaFleur who defined it as "a way of imagining possible futures through a black cultural lens". There was also Kathy Brown, who paraphrased Bennett Capers' 2019 work in stating that Afrofuturism is about "forward thinking as well as backward thinking, while having a distressing past, a distressing present, but still looking forward to thriving in the future". Others have said that the genre is "fluid and malleable", bringing together technology, African culture, and "other influences".
Seminal Afrofuturistic works include the novels of Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler; the canvases of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Angelbert Metoyer, and the photography of Renée Cox; the explicitly extraterrestrial mythoi of Parliament-Funkadelic, Herbie Hancock's partnership with Robert Springett and other visual artists, while developing the use of synthesizers, the Jonzun Crew, Warp 9, Deltron 3030, Kool Keith, Sun Ra.
Since the advent of Sun Ra's cosmic-inspired jazz in the mid-1950s, music has served as an essential mouthpiece of Afrofuturism. With music, Afrofuturism and its central themes of innovation and liberation reach a global audience, providing a sonic platform for futurist ideas.
In the Marvel's Black Panther, we have the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Wakanda--an African country that hides advanced technology from the world. Within Wakanda, Afrofuturism manifests most explicitly in the award-winning fashion and set design, a hypnotic blend of African traditional art and dress, cyberpunk, and space opera.
According to renowned sociologist Alondra Nelson, to label something as Afrofuturistic, is "very much in the eye of the beholder and this is a good thing. Afrofuturism should be a big tent of expanding borders of the possibilities for Black life." As a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and pioneering scholar of Afrofuturism, Nelson offers a tidy yet illuminating definition: Afrofuturism describes "visions of the future—including science, technology and its cultures in the laboratory, in social theory, and in aesthetics—through the experience and perspective of African diasporic communities. A facet of Afrofuturism that should not get overshadowed is Black people's longstanding, innovative, and critical engagement with science and technology." In all of Afrofuturism's many forms, questions are projected about the Black experience into the future.
I'd like to recommend these amazing books:
1) Kindred by Octavia E. Butler:
Summary: Kindred follows a modern Black woman who is kidnapped from her California home and brought to the antebellum South to save the white son of a plantation owner. Repeatedly brought back, the stay grows longer each time and she is unsure when it might end.
2) Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack:
Summary: This book entertains and enlightens readers on Afrofuturists' goal to empower individuals while breaking down racial, ethnic, and social limitations.
3) Rosewater by Tade Thompson:
Summary: The start of an award-winning trilogy, this novel is set in a Nigerian town on the edge of an alien biodome and follows a government agent who must face his dark past to help the community.
4) Binti by Nnedi Okorafor:
Summary: This award-winning start of a trilogy follows the first of the Himba people to be accepted to Oomza University. To go will mean leaving her family to be with those who don't respect her customs, but she is willing to try.
5) Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi:
Summary: A West African-inspired fantasy, the book fuses magic and danger as Zélie has one chance to strike back against the monarchy.
These are some of the best stories on Wattpad:
1) The Tides That Bind Us [AfroFuturism] by IntoTheTempest
Summary: The year is 2163, and the 700 Isles drift along seas blackened with secrets and scandals and the souls of men too wicked for damnation. A Nation bound by science and pride. A Nation that rose above.
Denden is the only reality Zaharah has known since an accident left her and her sister orphaned. With graduation and her art degree within reach, she dreams of making a better life for her family. But when her primary caretaker is killed, her reality is turned on its head, and the people she once called family hunt for her head.
She will have to choose between sacrificing herself for a better life for her sister, or challenging powers that be and being forced into a life of running and hiding.
2) Earthwitch by nelakho
Summary: Anele is dying, but that's nothing new. As an Earthwitch with a shattered soul, she's spent most of her life trying not to, but lately, the void eating through her keeps growing. And now, she's caught the attention of something worse than death -- a mad god on the hunt.
When a powerful mage dies in the desert, he leaves behind a spirit that burns like a beacon for miles. Pursued and wounded, it may be Anele's only hope of surviving -- if she can get to it first, and fight off every god, beast, and bounty hunter converging on its light.
3) Coyote by JaxonBlacc
Summary: Thousands of years after Earth became uninhabitable, humanity colonized other planets and moons around the solar system. Amid rising crime rate, the Galactic Space Force (GSF) set up a legal contract where registered bounty hunters (known as Coyotes) go after criminals and bring them in alive in return for credits.
Wolf is one of the best coyotes in the GSF, but also one of the most hated. He has no care of the damage he causes to people or buildings when pursuing a bounty, leaving the GSF having to compensate those affected by his actions.
When the daughter of a senator in The Kingdom becomes the most wanted terrorist in the solar system, the GSF is hired to find her before anyone else does.
Willing to look past Wolf's reckless history, the director of the GSF contracts him and other coyotes to find the senator's daughter and take her to the GSF at whatever cost. But with enemies after the same woman, Wolf is forced to trust and rely on his new partners in hopes of getting the biggest payday of his life.
4) Cogs Of Cinder by Unkultured
Summary: Zahra has broken the seventh tenet of her people but not by choice. A wraithborne caught in a never-ending cycle of life and gruesome deaths. Now tethered to this earthly plane only by the strange concoctions of the medicine men, she has reached the bold age of seventeen. An impossible feat for any and every wraithborne. A normgod in his bid to keep the eternal law eternal unleashes vile drenchedbeasts to hunt down this law-defying soul, inadvertently sparking up a chain of events that might just end the thirteenth dynasty.
Harun has broken more tenets than he cared to admit. A corpsemagus skilled in all branches of the dark arts, one who holds a grudge against the empire and is shunned by it. When he meets this wraithborne that has managed to defy the eternal law, a new feeling stirs inside him. One that might tear him apart in its wake.
Their paths sewn together by the threads of fate, they both journey across the vast empire, running from drenchedbeasts, meddling gods, corrupted magi and enigmatic machines.
For what is dead may never truly die.
5) The Nonpareil Order by adiamondbythebay
Summary: The year is 2218. It is the 23rd Century. Society as it once was has been altered, World Wars 3 and 4 have taken place, power, territory, and nautical lines of countries have been redrawn, and technology has entered a new dimension. America has gone under reform, like the rest of the world and renamed Sates of Tabularasa due to the New World Order.
Lux Carter, eighteen year-old dancer in her final year of Elitism Secondary School, is about to experience the biggest awakening of her life. Over the course of the last few months Lux has had to battle with others and herself in order to avoid reaching her breaking point. Again. Moving to a new city & school, Lux has to start her life over in hopes of returning to her somewhat normalcy.
However, Lux's life became anything but normal when a newfound danger in the form of Gage Héroux, leader of his team, The Kadraa, the highest of the young elite, takes an interest to her. Little does she know she is more a part of his world, the world that has created the new order of society, than she could have ever imagined. Her family's wealth and status amongst the public Elite isn't as pure and honest as she may think.
Now, as Lux begins to learn the secrets of her new friends and unveils the skeletons in the closet her parents have been hiding, she must find her place among them in their dark world of peril and domination... And determine if Gage is really worth her time and affection.
And we've arrived at the end of this fantastic sub-genre. Do let me know if you have favourites of your own in the inline comments here. See you in March with a new issue! 😄
Love you and take care! ❤️
Cheers, Nab =]