Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement (New Suns: Race, Gender, and Sexuality) (2019)
Growing out of the music scene, afrofuturism has emerged as an important aesthetic through films such as Black Panther and Get Out. While the significance of these sonic and visual avenues for afrofuturism cannot be underestimated, literature remains fundamental to understanding its full dimensions. Isiah Lavender’s Afrofuturism Rising explores afrofuturism as a narrative practice that enables users to articulate the interconnection between science, technology, and race across centuries.
By engaging with authors as diverse as Phillis Wheatley, David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Ann Jacobs, Samuel R. Delany Jr., Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright, Afrofuturism Rising extends existing scholarly conversations about who creates and what is created via science fiction. Through a trans-historical rereading of texts by these authors as science fiction, Lavender highlights the ways black experience in America has always been an experience of spatial and temporal dislocation akin to science fiction. Compelling and ambitious in scope, Afrofuturism Rising redefines both science fiction and literature as a whole.
by Isiah Lavender III (Author)
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Isiah Lavender, III is Assistant Professor of English at Louisiana State University, where he researches and teaches courses in African American literature and science fiction. In addition to his book Race in American Science Fiction (Indiana UP, 2011) and edited collection Black and Brown Planets: the Politics of Race in Science Fiction (UP of Mississippi, 2014), his publications on science fiction include essays and reviews in journals such as Extrapolation, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and Science Fiction Studies. He’s currently working on his second monograph Classics of Afrofuturism as well as a second collection, Yellow Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction, now under contract with the University Press of Mississippi.
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