Afro-Future Females
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Afro-Future Females Barr_final.indb 1 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM Barr_final.indb 2 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM Afro-Future Females Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New-Wave Trajectory Edited by MARLEEN S. BARR T H E O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E ss / Columbus Barr_final.indb 3 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM Copyright © 2008 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Afro-future females : black writers chart science fiction’s newest new-wave trajectory / edited by Marleen S. Barr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978–0–8142–1078–9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Science fiction, American. 2. Science fiction, American—History and criticism. 3. American fiction—African American authors—History and criticism. 4. American fic- tion—Women authors—History and criticism. 5. Women and literature—United States— History—20th century. 6. Women and literature—United States—History—21st century. I. Barr, Marleen S. PS648.S3A69 2008 813.’0876209928708996073—dc22 2007050083 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978–0–8142–1078–9) CD-ROM (ISBN 978–0–8142–9156–6) Cover design by Janna Thompson Chordas. Text design by Jennifer Shoffey Forsythe. Type set in Adobe Minion. Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Barr_final.indb 4 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM Contents PRefAce “All At One Point” Conveys the Point, Period: Or, Black Science Fiction Is Bursting Out All Over ix IntRODUctiOns: “DARK MAtteR” MAtteRS l Imaginative Encounters Hortense J. Spillers 3 l Black to the Future: Afro-Futurism 1.0 Mark Dery 6 l “On the Other Side of the Glass”: The Television Roots of Black Science Fiction Marleen S. Barr 14 EssAYS: THE BLACKness OF OUteR SPAce FictiON AS BLAst(Off) FROM THE PAst l Becoming Animal in Black Women’s Science Fiction Madhu Dubey 31 l “God Is Change”: Persuasion and Pragmatic Utopianism in Octavia E. Butler’s Earthseed Novels Ellen Peel 52 l Tananarive Due and Nalo Hopkinson Revisit the Reproduction of Mothering: Legacies of the Past and Strategies for the Future Alcena Madeline Davis Rogan 75 Barr_final.indb 5 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM vi | Contents l Close Encounters between Traditional and Nontraditional Science Fiction: Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred and Gayl Jones’s Corregidora Sing the Time Travel Blues Jennifer E. Henton 100 l Beyond the History We Know: Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Nisi Shawl, and Jarla Tangh Rethink Science Fiction Tradition De Witt Douglas Kilgore 119 l Responses to De Witt Douglas Kilgore Bubbling Champagne Power Trip Nisi Shawl 130 “Of Course People Can Fly” Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu 131 Carla Johnson/Jarla Tangh: A Close Encounter with My Pseudonym Jarla Tangh 132 STORies: TecHNO/MAGic SistAHS ARE NOT THE SistAHS FROM AnOTHER PLAnet l The Book of Martha Octavia E. Butler 135 l Double Consciousness Andrea Hairston 151 l Dynamo Hum Nisi Shawl 158 l The Ferryman Sheree R. Thomas 167 l Herbal Nalo Hopkinson 174 COmmentARies: KinDRED SPIRit l On Octavia E. Butler Tananarive Due 179 l Can a Brother Get Some Love? Sociobiology in Images of African-American Sensuality in Contemporary Cinema: Or, Why We’d Better the Hell Claim Vin Diesel as Our Own Steven Barnes 182 Barr_final.indb 6 4/15/2008 2:52:25 AM Contents | vii l A Conversation with Samuel R. Delany about Sex, Gender, Race, Writing—and Science Fiction Samuel R. Delany and Carl Freedman 191 l Black “Science Faction”: An Interview with Kevin Willmott, Director and Writer of CSA, The Confederate States of America Kevin Willmott and Marleen S. Barr 236 l Octavia’s Healing Power: A Tribute to the Late Great Octavia E. Butler Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu 241 AfteRWORD The Big Bang: Or, the Inception of Scholarship about Black Women Science Fiction Writers Marleen S. Barr 245 l Response to the Afterword Connecting Metamorphoses: Italo Calvino’s Mrs. Ph(i)NKo and I, Dr. Ph(d)SalvagGIo Ruth Salvaggio 249 NOtes ON COntRibUTORs 251 Barr_final.indb 7 4/15/2008 2:52:26 AM Barr_final.indb 8 4/15/2008 2:52:26 AM PRefAce “All At One Point” Conveys the Point, Period Or, Black Science Fiction Is Bursting Out All Over Race, far from being a special or marginal concern, was a central facet of the American story. On the evidence of Ellison’s and Morrison’s work, it is also a part of the story that defies the tenets of realism, or at least demands that they be combined with elements of allegory, folk tale, Gothic and romance. —A. O. Scott, “In Search of the Best” Afro-Future Females: Black Writers Chart Science Fiction’s Newest New- Wave Trajectory is my third effort in a series that began with Future Females: A Critical Anthology (1981, the first scholarly essay collection about women and science fiction). The series inception volume was fol- lowed by Future Females, The Next Generation: New Voices and Veloci- ties in Feminist Science Fiction Criticism (2000, the first scholarly essay collection to emphasize the post–baby boom generation of feminist sci- ence fiction scholars).Afro-Future Females is the first combined science fiction critical anthology and short story collection to focus upon black women via written and visual texts. This anthology, published after the New York Times Book Review declared that Toni Morrison’s Beloved “is the best work of American fiction published in the last 25 years” (Scott 17), emphasizes that the black writers who chart science fiction’s newest new-wave trajectory share the enterprise of lauded black great Amer- ican novelists. Toni Morrison—and the science fiction writers whose stories appear in this volume (Octavia E. Butler, Andrea Hairston, Nalo ix Barr_final.indb 9 4/15/2008 2:52:26 AM x | Preface Hopkinson, Nisi Shawl, and Sheree R. Thomas)—combine the tenets of realism with elements of allegory, folk tale, Gothic, and romance. My preface tells a story about the inception of the black science fiction that is currently bursting out all over the science fiction universe.1 I also emphasize why critics who pinpoint the best American fiction need to look to science fiction—to Harlan Ellison as well as to Ralph Ellison. Or: while a Philip Roth novel is a runner-up to Beloved on the Times’ list and no fewer than four Roth novels are mentioned as recipients of multiple votes, Roth’s contemporary, Samuel R. Delany, is an invisible man in relation to the Times’ search for the best. The point (and I will have a lot to say about points): our late beloved Octavia E. Butler is no invisible woman eclipsed by Toni Morrison’s stellar presence. Butler and Morrison, contributors to science fiction’s black new wave, bring fantastic black diasporic narra- tive elements to bear upon denying the tenets of realism.2 Both authors write in a manner that adheres to Frank Norris’s definition of the great American novel: “Frank Norris wrote that ‘the Great American novel is not extinct like the dodo, but mythical like the hippogriff’” (Scott 17). According to A. O. Scott, “the hippogriff, a monstrous hybrid of griffin and horse, is often taken as the very symbol of fantastical impossibility, a unicorn’s unicorn” (Scott 17). The hippogriff represents the fact that black science fiction and the great American novel share the same trajectory in that they both center upon fantastical impossibility: Beloved is about a ghost, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, another example of how texts categorized as black realistic literature routinely incorporate the fantastic, includes mystical events and the supernatural. Black women science fic- tion writers focus upon ghosts, mystical events, and the supernatural too. Literary criticism that at once celebrates Morrison and her fellow black mainstream fiction writers while ignoring black science fiction should become as extinct as the dodo. Much of the best mainstream fiction incorporates the fantastic, a unicorn’s unicorn. Afro-future female writers transcend ghettoizing generic classification; they join the best American writers in creating work that combines mainstream literature with science fiction and fantasy. ◗ I. The Revenge of the Hippogriffs Or, Black Science Fiction Writers Did Not Create Godzilla A science fiction writer walks into a bookstore. “Do you have a black science fiction anthology?” she asks. The flummoxed clerk experiences Barr_final.indb 10 4/15/2008 2:52:26 AM Preface | xi a Eureka! moment. “No. No black science fiction anthology. But not to worry. We carry The Best Japanese Science Fiction Stories.” I intend no shtick. Sheree R. Thomas is the science fiction writer who walked into the bookstore. Her idea to create the Dark Matter anthologies emanated from the anecdote I have related.3 Dark Matter, the definitive sci- ence fiction anthologies of the new millennium, follow such representative anthologies for their time as Harlan Ellison’s Dangerous Visions, Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder, Bruce Sterling’s Mirrorshades, and Larry McCaffery’s Storming the Reality Studio. The bookstore clerk’s response makes the need for black science fiction anthologies patently obvious. It was not ludicrous for the clerk to respond to Thomas’s request by equating black science fiction with Japanese science fiction: the two are not completely devoid of connection and can mutually illuminate each other. Karen Tei Yamashita, for example, writes fiction about Japanese Brazilians.