Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls - by Karima K Jeffrey-Legette (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book examines twentieth and twenty-first century speculative fiction films that represent women and girls of African descent Jeffrey offers insights about positive developments while calling attention to questionable trends in recent movie-making.

Book Synopsis

Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls: Watch It! examines depictions of African-descended women and girls in twentieth and twenty-first century filmmaking. Topics include a discursive analysis of stereotypes; roles garnered by Halle Berry, the only Black woman to receive an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role; the promise of characters, relationships, and scripts found in works ranging from Altered Carbon, Lovecraft Country, and HBO's Watchmen series; and a closing chapter that considers the legacy of Black women in horror. Jeffrey-Legette illustrates the ways in which recent texts explore the trauma endured by people of African descent in the United States of America in evocative ways. In doing so, she provides a compelling interpretation of prevalent, well-received, and recurring images of Black women and girls in American popular culture.

Review Quotes

This project fulfills its promise, as stated by author Karima Jeffrey-Legette, "to discuss works by and about Black women and girls as they dynamically explore, write about, and/or appear in speculative film and moving images." Jeffrey-Legette aptly explores "the (mis)representation of Black women/girls in these imagined spaces that entertain" through a thorough review of various texts. The judicious use of reference material, across multiple genres such as film and television, literature, and streaming videos supports Jeffrey-Legette's critical reflections and analyses on the imagined Black/Brown body/human/humanoid in future and alternative contexts. This contextualization of various works of speculative fiction within an African-centered framework brings a thoughtful, necessary, and critical lens to understanding the "Black images [that] are quite pervasive in the rendering of the speculative today." It is also a project that complements earlier foundational work like Thomas' Dark Matter and brings into sharp relief how the absence and marginalizing of Black and Brown women and girls as we imagine the future is not only misrepresentation on a large-scale but actually unimaginative and lacking in creativity in some cases. As a scholar and educator, I can confidently assert that Speculative Film and Moving Images by or about Black Women and Girls: Watch It! is a must have for anyone engaged in writing about, writing on, or simply enjoying speculative fiction today, especially work that features Black women and girls.

About the Author

Karima K. Jeffrey-Legette is associate professor of English at Hampton University.