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With creative essays from award-winning African writers of black speculative fiction, this engaging and approachable book seeks to address the lack of critical conversations on Afrofuturism and Afro-centered futurisms from people who intimately understand the continent and its traditions. Since the term''s creation in the 1990s by Mark Dery, scholarly essays and books on Afrofuturism have increasingly reimagined the past and present experiences of the African diaspora, exploring what black futures could look like. Unified by a shared heritage, writers of African descent have their differential languages, cultures, and stories that diversify their critical articulations of a reimagined Africa. Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction features scholarly essays that are critical and cultural interrogations of African fiction, showcasing how each author''s work engages with a specifically Afro-centered futurism. Authors and award winners - including Eugen Bacon, Nuzo Onoh, Cheryl S. Ntumy, Dare Segun Falowo, Dilman Dila, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Shingai Njeri Kagundan - provide boldly hybrid chapters (both creative and scholarly) that interface Afrocentric artefacts and exegesis. Through ethnographic reflections and intense scrutinies of African writing, these writers contribute open and diverse reflections of "Afrofuturism," "Africanfuturism," and "Africanjujuism." The authors in Afro-Centered Futurisms in Our Speculative Fiction are intrinsic participants in this important conversation on the rise of black speculative fiction that explores diversity and social (in)justice and charts poignant stories with black hero/ines who remake their worlds in a color zone of their own image.>
List of contents
Preface·
The Structure of This Book1. Suyi Okungbowa: Afrocentric Futurisms - The Case for an Inclusive Expression,
Nigeria/Canada2. Stephen Embleton: Cosmologies and Languages Building Africanfuturism
, South Africa/UK3. Eugen Bacon: An Afrofuturistic Dystopia and the Afro-irreal
, Tanzania/Australia4. Nuzo Onoh: The Power of African Spirituality in Africanfuturism
, Nigeria/UK5. Shingai Njeri Kagunda: Black Futurisms Vs. Systems of Domination
, Kenya6. Cheryl S. Ntumy: Faith and Fantasy - Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist Spirituality
, Ghana7. Xan van Rooyen: Queer Imaginings in Africanfuturism Inspired by African History
, South Africa/Finland8. Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga: Afrofuturism and Exploring Cultural Identity as a Process of Becoming
, Rwanda/Australia9. Tobi Ogundiran: Fabulist Imaginings in Tales of the Dark and Fantastic
, Nigeria/USA10. Dilman Dila: A Vision for Direct Democracy in Yat Madit
, Uganda11. Nerine Dorman: A Gaze at Post-Colonial Themes That Re-Envision Africa
, South Africa12. Denouement: Autoethnography - The Self-As-Research
, Eugen Bacon, Tanzania/AustraliaAcknowledgementsIndex
About the author
Eugen Bacon, MA, MSc, PhD, is an African Australian author of several novels and collections. She’s a British Fantasy Award winner, a Foreword Indies Award winner, a twice World Fantasy Award finalist, and a finalist in other awards. Eugen was announced in the honor list of the Otherwise Fellowships for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’ and was a 2024 Philip K Dick Award nominee. Eugen’s creative work has appeared worldwide, including in Apex Magazine, Award Winning Australian Writing, Fantasy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction. Visit her at eugenbacon.com.
