Afro-Future Females : Black... | Buy

Summary

Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fictionrs"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 womenrs"s writing that would otherwise be excluded.Afro-Future Femalesbuilds upon Barrrs"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 workrs"s main point: black science fiction is the most exciting literature of the nascent twenty-first century.

Author Biography

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.

Preface: "All At One Point" Conveys the Point, Period: Or, Black Science Fiction Is Bursting Out All Over	p. ix
Introductions: "Dark Matter" Matters
Imaginative Encounters	p. 3
Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0	p. 6
"On the Other Side of the Glass": The Television Roots of Black Science Fiction	p. 14
Essays: The Blackness of Outer Space Fiction as Blast(off) from the Past
Becoming Animal in Black Women's Science Fiction	p. 31
"God Is Change": Persuasion and Pragmatic Utopianism in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed Novels	p. 52
Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson Revisit the Reproduction of Mothering: Legacies of the Past and Strategies for the Future	p. 75
Close Encounters between Traditional and Nontraditional Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred and Gayl Jones's Corregidora Sing the Time Travel Blues	p. 100
Beyond the History We Know: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Nisi Shawl, and Jarla Tangh Rethink Science Fiction Tradition	p. 119
Responses to De Witt Douglas Kilgore Bubbling Champagne Power Trip	p. 130
"Of Course People Can Fly"	p. 131
Carla Johnson/Jarla Tangh: A Close Encounter with My Pseudonym	p. 132
Stories: Techno/Magic Sistahs Are Not the Sistahs from Another Planet
The Book of Martha	p. 135
Double Consciousness	p. 151
Dynamo Hum	p. 158
The Ferryman	p. 167
Herbal	p. 174
Commentaries: Kindred Spirit
On Octavia E. Butler	p. 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	p. 182
A Conversation with Samuel R. Delany about Sex, Gender, Race, Writing-and Science Fiction	p. 191
Black "Science Faction": An Interview with Kevin Willmott, Director and Writer of CSA, The Confederate States of America	p. 236
Octavia's Healing Power: A Tribute to the Late Great Octavia E. Butler	p. 241
Afterword: The Big Bang: Or, the Inception of Scholarship about Black Women Science Fiction Writers	p. 245
Response to the Afterword: Connecting Metamorphoses: Italo Calvino's Mrs. Ph(i)NKo and I, Dr. Ph(d)SalvagGlo	p. 249
Notes on Contributors	p. 251
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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