Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction - (Black Literary and Cultural Expressions) by Eugen Bacon (Hardcover)

About the Book

Creative essays from award-winning African writers speak to the multiple futurisms in their black speculative fiction.

Book Synopsis

In this vibrant and approachable book, award-winning writers of black speculative fiction bring together excerpts from their work and creative reflections on futurisms with original essays.

Features an introduction by Suyi Okungbowa.

Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction showcases creative-critical essays that negotiate genre bending and black speculative fiction with writerly practice. As Afrodecendant peoples with lived experience from the continent, award-winning authors use their intrinsic voices in critical conversations on Afrofuturism and Afro-centered futurisms. By engaging with difference, they present a new kind of African study that is an evaluative gaze at African history, African spirituality, Afrosurrealism, "becoming," black radical imagination, cultural identity, decolonizing queerness, myths, linguistic cosmologies, and more.

Contributing authors - Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Dilman Dila, Eugen Bacon, Nerine Dorman, Nuzo Onoh, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Stephen Embleton, Suyi Okungbowa, Tobi Ogundiran and Xan van Rooyen - offer boldly hybrid chapters (both creative and scholarly) that interface Afrocentric artefacts and exegesis. Through ethnographic reflections and intense scrutinies of African fiction, these writers contribute open and diverse reflections of Afro-centered futurisms.

The authors in Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction feature in major genre and literary awards, including the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Locus, Ignyte, Nommo, Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jackson and Otherwise Awards, among others. Theyare also intrinsic partners in a vital conversation on the rise of black speculative fiction that explores diversity and social (in)justice, charting poignant stories with black hero/ines who remake their worlds in color zones of their own image.

Review Quotes

This collection of vibrant, insightful, often witty chapters is a deep-dive exploration of African culture/s, histories, futures. It makes a strong case against the notion of a homogeneous 'Africa, ' while celebrating diversity, and laying out pathways for co-existence, for collective understandings and values. The writers take their readers into dystopia and cosmologies, inclusive futurisms and imagined realities, while pointing to the critical importance of nomination, identity, and world-making through story. From the south to the north, from history to the future, in philosophical accounts and excerpts from literary works, it offers a dense and brilliantly illuminated report on Africa: on its rich complexity, and its astounding wealth of image, narrative, and philosophies.
Jen Webb, Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice, University of Canberra, Australia

This remarkable collection is a treasure of knowledge as each essay explores speculative authors, from the African continent, and their relationship to futurism through their diverse connection to their country (there are 54 countries on the continent) and the impact of language, economy, spirituality, and gender on their writing. This incredible book is just the beginning of delving into the author's 'self-as-research, ' as stated in the introduction. I'm excited to re-read their essay in conjunction with their speculative writing.
Linda D. Addison, HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient

With its Janus-like gaze, Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction celebrates the artistic and cultural forces flourishing worldwide, bringing together an unprecedented cross-disciplinary selection of sophisticated essays by acclaimed Afrodescendants intent on repurposing storytelling. Momentous and quirky.
Dominque Hecq, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, and award-winning author

About the Author

Eugen Bacon, MA, MSc, PhD, is an African Australian author of Writing Speculative Fiction: Creative and Critical Approaches (Bloomsbury, 2019) and several novels and fiction collections. She is a 2022 World Fantasy Award finalist, and her Danged Black Thing was a finalist in the 2023 BSFA, Foreword, Aurealis and Australian Shadows Awards, and made the Otherwise Award Honor List. Her recent books include Mage of Fools (novel), Chasing Whispers (collection) and An Earnest Blackness (essays).

Visit her website at eugenbacon.com and Twitter feed at @EugenBacon.