Critical Black Futures
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Critical Black Futures
Critical Black Futures imagines worlds, afrofutures, cities, bodies, art and eras that are simultaneously distant, parallel, present, counter, and perpetually materializing. From an exploration of W. E. B. Du Bois’ own afrofuturistic short stories, to trans* super fluid blackness, this volume challenges readers—community leaders, academics, communities, and creatives—to push further into surreal imaginations. Beyond what some might question as the absurd, this book is presented as a speculative space that looks deeply into the foundations of human belief. Diving deep into this notional rabbit hole, each contributor offers a thorough excursion into the imagination to discover ‘what was’, while also providing tools to push further into the ‘not yet’.
Queer Times, Black Futures
Finalist, 2019 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Studies A profound intellectual engagement with Afrofuturism and the philosophical questions of space and time Queer Times, Black Futures considers the promises and pitfalls of imagination, technology, futurity, and liberation as they have persisted in and through racial capitalism. Kara Keeling explores how the speculative fictions of cinema, music, and literature that center Black existence provide scenarios wherein we might imagine alternative worlds, queer and otherwise. In doing so, Keeling offers a sustained meditation on contemporary investments in futurity, speculation, and technology, paying particular attention to their significance to queer and Black freedom. Keeling reads selected works, such as Sun Ra’s 1972 film Space is the Place and the 2005 film The Aggressives, to juxtapose the Afrofuturist tradition of speculative imagination with the similar “speculations” of corporate and financial institutions. In connecting a queer, cinematic reordering of time with the new possibilities technology offers, Keeling thinks with and through a vibrant conception of the imagination as a gateway to queer times and Black futures, and the previously unimagined spaces that they can conjure.
Black Towns, Black Futures
Some know Oklahoma’s Black towns as historic communities that thrived during the Jim Crow era—this is only part of the story. In this book, Karla Slocum shows that the appeal of these towns is more than their past. Drawing on interviews and observations of town life spanning several years, Slocum reveals that people from diverse backgrounds are still attracted to the communities because of the towns’ remarkable history as well as their racial identity and rurality. But that attraction cuts both ways. Tourists visit to see living examples of Black success in America, while informal predatory lenders flock to exploit the rural Black economies. In Black towns, there are developers, return migrants, rodeo spectators, and gentrifiers, too. Giving us a complex window into Black town and rural life, Slocum ultimately makes the case that these communities are places for affirming, building, and dreaming of Black community success even as they contend with the sometimes marginality of Black and rural America.