Introduction to Afrofuturism
A Mixtape in Black Literature & Arts

Introduction to Afrofuturism delivers a fresh and contemporary introduction to Afrofuturism, discussing key themes, understandings, and interdisciplinary topics across multiple genres in Black Literature, film, and music. From its origins to the present, this critical volume features scholarly works, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction and analyzes the contributions of notable Afrofuturists such as Octavia Bulter, Sun Ra, N.K. Jemisin, Janelle Monáe, Nnedi Okorafor, Saul Williams, Prince, and more. The volume highlights the impact of films such as Black Panther, Woman King, and They Cloned Tyrone, and covers a variety of essential topics giving students a comprehensive view of the legacy of storytelling and the tradition of "remixing" in Black literature and arts. This volume makes connections across academic subject areas and is an engaging reader for pop culture and media film studies, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, Black and Africana studies, hip-hop studies, creative writing, and composition and rhetoric.

Introduction

PART I. Black Poetics, Creative Nonfiction, Drama & Prose

Chapter Abstract

1. CURTIS L. CRISLER

Last Stop to Dine

Looking for Hurston in a Triptych

Fifty Something Years of Letters Laters (my paradoxical absolution of Emmett Till)

The Automatism of Reflection on Creation and Space—a Triptych (featuring Alice Coltrane’s symphonic aura)

2. ZORINA EXIE FREY

I Heart Music: Hip-Hop is Dead. Long Live Hip-Hop

I’m a Black man wearing the stars and stripes, what don’t I understand?

3. RAN WALKER

Mason Dixon

The Multiverse of a Heart

A Soulful Meditation

4. ALAN KING

Cornbread Othello

5. RAINA J. LEȎN

poet: on imagining Planet X as the only safe space

Whispers and rockets

6. ARTHUR RICKYDOC FLOWERS, JR.

Afroprophetica: A Hoodoo Future

PART II. Black Music & Film

Chapter Abstract

7. PAUL YOUNGQUIST

Satellites are Spinning: Notes on a Sun Ra Poem

8. DUEWA M. FRAZIER

Juice from the Mind: Afrofuturism in Hip-Hop and Black Visual Culture

9. CHRISTIAN M. HINES

Young, Gifted, and Black: Exploring the Community Building of Science and Sisterhood in Marvel’s Black Panther:Wakanda Forever (2022)

10. JULIETTE GOUTIERRE

Hacking Boundaries and Subverting Systems of Oppression in Neptune Frost (2021)

11. DOUGLAS RASMUSSEN

“Heaven somewhere in the future”: The Digital imagination of Prince’s Art Official Age

12. JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN

My Life in The New Wave: On My Origins as A Black Fabulist

13. JEREMY LAUGHERY

“It’s Not What I See, But What I See Through”: Queer Afrofuturism and Afrosurrealism in Neptune Frost (2021)

14. OLAYOMBO RAJI-OYELADE

Altering Normative Epistemologies in African Speculative Fiction: A Reading Of The Woman King (2022)

15. OLIVIA UZODIMA EKEH

I’m a Witness: Surviving Dystopia Through the Sonic Memory of Black Women in When I Get Home

16. SHERNĀ ANN PHILLIPS

In The Afro-Future, Even Jezebels Like ‘Yo-Yo’ Deserve to Be Saved: An Exploration of Black Female Characters in They Cloned Tyrone (2023)

PART III. Black Feminisms and Luminaries in Speculative Prose

Chapter Abstract

17. ANINDITA GHOSAL and ARITRA GHOSAL

Imag(in)ings Afrofuturistic Assemblages: Nurturing Multispecies Entanglement in Nnedi Okorofor’s Graphic narrative LaGuardia.

18. FLOURICE W. RICHARDSON

Exploring Afrofuturism as a Tool to Dismantle Hegemony in Octavia Butler’s “The Evening and the Morning and the Night”

19. HEATHER THAXTER

Seeing is believing: An Afrofuturist reading of the visual medium of Duffy and Jennings’s graphic novel adaptation of Parable of the Sower.

20. AYANA HARDAWAY

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars): Black Women & Ancient Wisdom

21. JADA SIMILTON

Demystifying the Speculative: An Ifa reading of Stigmata.

22. JASMINE H. WADE

Live and Let Live Black Feminism and Difference

23. KEISHA ALLAN

Verbal Marronage as Linguistic Resistance in Midnight Robber

24. MICHAEL RA-SHON HALL

How did I (We) Get Here?: Speculative Time Travel and the Contested Place of Technology in Afrofuturistic Fictions

25. VICTORIA MOTEN

Mother(ship) Intuition: Black Women Protagonists in Afrofuturism

26. AK WRIGHT

F.A.M: Trans-Afrofuturism in Janelle Monae’s and Danny Lore’s “Nevermind”

Reading, Writing, and Discussion Guide

DuEwa M. Frazier, Ed.D., M.F.A. is a poet, essayist, scholar, digital creator, TEDx and keynote speaker, and Assistant Professor of English at Coppin State University. Frazier’s research, creative nonfiction, and digital writings focuses on hip-hop and popular culture, culturally responsive pedagogy, Black women writers and Black feminism. She is the editor of, Teaching Humanities with Cultural Responsiveness at HBCUs and HSIs (2024). Her poetry has featured in Split this Rock/Blog this Rock, Water Magazine, Tidal Basin Review, Poetry in Performance, and others. She is the author of several published volumes of poetry and children’s stories. She has been a writing fellow at Hurston/Wright Foundation and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She holds advanced degrees in Creative Writing, Curriculum and Teaching, and Higher Education Leadership. Frazier earned the MFA degree in Creative Writing at The New School.