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Isiah Lavender III Lisa YaszekLiterary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century

2021; Volume: 48; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/sfs.2021.0085

2327-6207

Megan M. Stowe,

Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

590 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) Those issues aside, Hoel’s Stalker could be of interest to Tarkovsky fans and cinephiles. It is a satisfactory supplement for fans with renewed interest in the film, due in part to the Criterion Collection’s recent Stalker DVD and Blu-ray release (2017). Scholars would do well to pass on the book. Hoel’s brief references to theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Susan Sontag, and Slavoj Žižek hint at the possibility of more robust analyses, but Hoel opts for long quotations rather than engaging with these thinkers at length.—Troy Michael Bordun, University of Northern British Columbia In Full Color: The Future of Afrofuturism. Isiah Lavender III and Lisa Yaszek, eds. Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century. Ohio State UP, 2020. vii+254 pp. $34.95 pbk. Literary Afrofuturisms in the Twenty-First Century compiles essays by scholars working in the field, Afrofuturist art by the talented Stacey Robinson, and the rare treat of an author and editor roundtable that interrogates the value and meaning of Afrofuturism as both a frame of inquiry and a potentially limiting marketing label. In their introduction to this collection, “Imagining Futures in Full Color,” Isiah Lavender III and Lisa Yaszek update the complex, often-competing definitions of Afrofuturism, pointing to it as an “aesthetic practice that enables artists to communicate the experience of science, technology, and race across centuries, continents, and culture,” forming a “multigenerational, multimedia artistic experiment” (2-3). Scholarship on Afrofuturism in the past decade has expanded beyond Mark Dery’s 1993 conception of the term to include a broader, more robust vision of Afrofuturism that includes a “globe-spanning tapestry of creative voices and aesthetic practices linking historic African American, contemporary black Atlantic, and pan-African authors together in provocative new ways” (9). The collection is situated at least in part in the context of a global movement for Black lives, increased attention to police brutality and systemic racism in the US, and a burgeoning demand for Black speculative art (the kind of art lamented by, for instance, proponents of the now-infamous Puppygate [20152016 ]). In response, the featured authors, editors, and scholars emphasize Afrofuturism’s ability to look through difficult pasts and presents into a future where Black people are thriving in full color. The book focuses primarily on literary Afrofuturist works in order to emphasize the contributions of print as a critical lens for understanding Black aesthetic practices in the current moment, marked by political, environmental, creative, and global contexts. As such, it is divided into four sections: Afrofuturism Now (chapters 1-2); Afrofuturism in Literary History (chapters 3-5); Afrofuturism in Cultural History (chapters 6-8); and Afrofuturism and Africa (chapters 9-12). These sections are bookended by an author and editor roundtable that includes commentary from Bill Campbell, Minister Faust, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin, Chinelo Onwualu, Nisi Shawl, and Nick Wood, presented with questions from editors Lavender and Yaszek, and “Coda: Wokeness and Afrofuturism.” Part one grounds Afrofuturism as an ever- 591 BOOKS IN REVIEW developing and complicated aesthetic movement—with room for disagreement among and between authors and scholars—that seeks to “evoke the past, critique the present, and challenges us to imagine a greater, more possible future” (11). Part two traces the impact of Afrofuturism in sf, especially in alternate histories and Afrofuturist YA. Part three interrogates Black history and culture through the lens of Afrofuturism, including Mark Bould’s recovery of John M. Faucette; environmental racism; and the prominent rise of the innovative “geontological sf” of N.K. Jemisin. Part four brings us to the much-debated question of Afrofuturism as a global literary practice rather than one limited to a North American context. Finally, the anthology ends with Lavender and Yaszek’s discussion of the significance of the collection as well as of how we might look beyond Afrofuturism while still finding value in its ideas and practices Part I, “Afrofuturism Now,” opens with Stacey Robinson’s “AfroVision” (2018), which contextualizes the rest of the chapter using one of Afrofuturism’s central tenets: to view how culture and artistic expression shaped and are shaped through Black aesthetic practices...