The term Afrofuturism was coined the same year Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower was first published and one year after Mae Jemison became the first Black woman to go to space. In his 1993 essay Black to the Future, cultural critic Mark Dery wrote Afrofuturism was “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of 20th century technoculture — and more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future.” Dery, in conversation with his interviewees, put a name to the aesthetic movement that was born within the event horizon of the Space Age. Black artists in the mid-to-late-20th century were painting themselves in the stars and in the distant future. There was Nichelle Nichols’ groundbreaking portrayal of Lieutenant Uhura in Star Trek as well the avant-garde music of Sun Ra, who once said “the impossible attracts me, because everything possible has been done and the world didn’t change.” Both Nichols’ iconic red Starfleet uniform and Sun Ra’s star-patterned tunic were on display last year at the Smithsonian’s Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures exhibit. Kevin Strait, curator of that exhibit, provides a contemporary definition of Afrofuturism as “an evolving concept expressed through a Black cultural lens that reimagines, reinterprets, and reclaims the past and present for a more empowering future for African Americans.”
Octavia Butler’s typewriter was also part of the Afrofuturism exhibit. Her highly acclaimed works are considered to be some of the first examples of Afrofuturistic fiction. Published in 1993, Parable of the Sower is largely set in 2025. The post-apocalyptic USA presented in Parable of the Sower is an anarchic wasteland ravaged by the effects of climate change and complete disunification as people struggle to survive amidst violence, prejudice, and the impossibly high cost of living. Protagonist Lauren Olamina, who feels the suffering of those around her, creates a new system of belief predicated on education and autonomy. Lauren Olamina uses the past to shape the future and Butler’s narrative encapsulates what Professor Michael Bennett writes about Afrofuturism: “ [it] estranges its viewership from the belief that life must be as it currently is.”
Stop by the Frisco Public Library to check out these Afrofuturism titles:
What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky
The Wishing Pool and Other Stories
Sources and Additional Reading
Afrofuturism by Michael Bennett
Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism, and the Language of Black Speculative Literature by Hope Wabuke
Afrofuturism Explained: A Conversation with Curator Kevin Strait
Black to the Future: Interviews with Samuel R. Delany, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose by Mark Dery
How Sun Ra Taught Us to Believe in the Impossible by Hua Hsu
What is Afrofuturism by Shantay Robinson
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