“To Be Able to Love Is Freedom”: African American Historical Romance as Neo-Slave Narrative

The stories of enslaved black people in the United States have been creatively imagined in an abundance of ways since Emancipation, through approaches that cross multiple boundaries. From novels such as Toni Morrison’s Beloved and the syncopated sonnets of Tyehimba Jess’s Olio, to Kyle Baker’s comic, Nat Turner, and the motion picture legacies of Alex Haley’s Roots – each draw on different structural conventions and tropes, while bearing collective witness to racial trauma. My proposed paper explores the risks and rewards of relocating African American historical romance from the margins to the center of this tradition. I consider how the vigorous scholarly discourse that surrounds “neo-slave narratives” can be enriched with the meaningful inclusion of Beverly Jenkins, Alyssa Cole, Piper Huguley, and other romance writers. What happens to our critical assumptions about how slavery should be depicted when the so-called fantasy of the romance\u27s “happily ever after” is placed in conversation with thought experiments like Octavia Butler’s Kindred that use time-travel as a vehicle to interrogate larger truths? And how do we reckon with the kind of intimacy that is valued in the romance genre – the joy of companionship, the pleasures of touch – when the black body’s physicality seems inextricably bound to historical realities of sexual, economic, and psychological exploitation? Based on my research and teaching experiences with these texts, my analysis suggests that while fraught questions of “love” circulate through most fictional representations of slavery, African American historical romance underscore a vital sense of vulnerability, women-centered desire, and inner resourcefulness that yields new and challenging interpretations of the past

Afrofuturism 2.0 : The Rise of Astro-Blackness

"The ideas and practices related to afrofuturism have existed for most of the 20th century, especially in the North American-African diaspora community. After Mark Dery coined the word "afrofuturism" in 1993, Alondra Nelson - as a member of an online forum - along with other participants, began to explore the initial terrain and intellectual underpinnings of the concept noting that "[a]froFuturism has emerged as a term of convenience to describe analysis, criticism, and cultural production that addresses the intersections between race and technology." Afrofuturism 2.0 : The Rise of Astro-Blackness represents a transition from previous ideas related to afrofuturism that were formed in the late 20th century around issues of the digital divide, music, and literature. Afrofuturism 2.0 expands and broadens the discussion around the concept to include religion, architecture, communications, visual art, and philosophy and reflects its current growth as an emerging global Pan African creative phenomenon." -- p. [4] of cover