Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction PDF Download

Author: Meghan Gilbert-Hickey
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496833856
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Contributions by Malin Alkestrand, Joshua Yu Burnett, Sean P. Connors, Jill Coste, Meghan Gilbert-Hickey, Miranda A. Green-Barteet, Sierra Hale, Kathryn Strong Hansen, Elizabeth Ho, Esther L. Jones, Sarah Olutola, Alex Polish, Zara Rix, Susan Tan, and Roberta Seelinger Trites Race in Young Adult Speculative Fiction offers a sustained analysis of race and representation in young adult speculative fiction (YASF). The collection considers how characters of color are represented in YASF, how they contribute to and participate in speculative worlds, how race affects or influences the structures of speculative worlds, and how race and racial ideologies are implicated in YASF. This collection also examines how race and racism are discussed in YASF or if, indeed, race and racism are discussed at all. Essays explore such notable and popular works as the Divergent series, The Red Queen, The Lunar Chronicles, and the Infernal Devices trilogy. They consider the effects of colorblind ideology and postracialism on YASF, a genre that is often seen as progressive in its representation of adolescent protagonists. Simply put, colorblindness silences those who believe—and whose experiences demonstrate—that race and racism do continue to matter. In examining how some YASF texts normalize many of our social structures and hierarchies, this collection examines how race and racism are represented in the genre and considers how hierarchies of race are reinscribed in some texts and transgressed in others. Contributors point toward the potential of YASF to address and interrogate racial inequities in the contemporary West and beyond. They critique texts that fall short of this possibility, and they articulate ways in which readers and critics alike might nonetheless locate diversity within narratives. This is a collection troubled by the lingering emphasis on colorblindness in YASF, but it is also the work of scholars who love the genre and celebrate its progress toward inclusivity, and who further see in it an enduring future for intersectional identity.

Author: Cheryl Sterling
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000461041
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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This book explores the works of women writers and filmmakers across the African and African Diaspora world, reflecting on how the transnational sphere can serve to highlight voices that were at the margins of gender and race hierarchies. The book demonstrates how in discourse and theory Africana women are the centers of their own knowledge production and agency, as the artists and their characters point the way forward. Their multi-perspectivism leads to avenues of selective mutuality and influence to generate transformative creative work, scholarship, and practices. Writers included are Sylvia Wynter, Edwidge Danticat, Amanda Smith, Werewere Liking, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Sefi Atta, NoViolet Bulawayo, Nnedi Okorafor, Mariama Bâ, Ama Ata Aidoo, Igiaba Scego, Léonara Miano, Gisèle Hountondji, Monique Ilboudo, and Maryse Condé, as well as filmmaker Kemi Adetiba. Over the course of the book, the contributors critically explore and update the canon on women in the African and African Diaspora literary sphere, highlighting their contributions to theoretical debates and providing substantive nuance to diasporic subjectivity. This book will be of interest to scholars of African and Africana Studies, comparative literature, and women and gender studies.

Author: Taryne Jade Taylor
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000934136
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 1068

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms delivers a new, inclusive examination of science fiction, from close analyses of single texts to large-scale movements, providing readers with decolonized models of the future, including print, media, race, gender, and social justice. This comprehensive overview of the field explores representations of possible futures arising from non-Western cultures and ethnic histories that disrupt the “imperial gaze”. In four parts, The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms considers the look of futures from the margins, foregrounding the issues of Indigenous groups, racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities, and any people whose stakes in the global order of envisioning futures are generally constrained due to the mechanics of our contemporary world. The book extends current discussions in the area, looking at cutting-edge developments in the discipline of science fiction and diverse futurisms as a whole. Offering a dynamic mix of approaches and expansive perspectives, this volume will appeal to academics and researchers seeking to orient their own interventions into broader contexts.

Author: Eva Ulrike Pirker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000842657
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description
The future is a contested terrain and one that has in recent years been debated, theorized and imaginatively constructed with an unprecedented, albeit unsurprising, sense of urgency. The recent Afrofuturist imaginary is an increasingly noticeable field in these debates and manifestations, requesting as it does the envisioning of a future through an artistic, scientific and technological African or Black lens. Afrofuturism is not a new term, but it seems to have broadened and developed in different directions. The recent Afrofuturist engagements, which oscillate between narratives of empowerment and tech-wise superheroes on the one hand and dystopian agendas on the other, raise questions about earlier futurist accounts, about historical Black visions of the future that precede the establishment even of the term “Afrofuturism”. This volume contextualizes Afrofuturism’s diverse approaches in the past and present through investigations into overlapping horizons between Afrofuturist agendas and other intellectual and/or artistic movements (e.g., Pan-Africanism, debates about Civil Rights, decolonial debates and transcultural modernisms), as well as through explorations of Afrofuturist approaches in the 21st century across media cultures and in a transcultural perspective. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/ TED
ISBN: 1501195476
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
A powerful journey from star athlete to sudden paralysis to creative awakening, award-winning science fiction writer Nnedi Okorafor shows that what we think are our limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths. Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi’s lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan—something a simple operation would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of self begins to waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories. What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction author: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks. In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents’ hometown in Nigeria. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths—far greater than when we were unbroken. A guidebook for anyone eager to understand how their limitations might actually be used as a creative springboard, Broken Places & Outer Spaces is an inspiring look at how to open up new windows in your mind.

Author: Rose A. Sackeyfio
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793642443
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
African Women Writing Diaspora examines the works of contemporary African female writers through diaspora perspectives on the constructions of identity in transnational spaces. The collection interrogates the ways in which women construct new ways of telling the African story in the global age of social, economic, and political transformation.

Author: Leonie Dittricher
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 366838794X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Literature - Africa, grade: 2,0, University of Bremen, language: English, abstract: Nnedi Okorafor’s novel 'Lagoon' is a work of speculative fiction which challenges science fiction stereotypes by placing an alien invasion narrative inside Lagos, Nigeria and mixing mythological creatures and aliens with themes of spirituality, ideology, and political, social and personal dilemmas. Among those, the novel explores terrains of gender inequality and gender identity and displays a feminist attitude towards those issues. The characters and their actions underline the conflicts which define issues researched in gender studies. That and the themes as well as reader and author-related motives are guidelines to outline the representation of gender in Nnedi Okorafor’s 'Lagoon' and attempting to expose a feminist mentality. Nnedi Okorafor challenges traditional gender roles explicitly and implicitly by offering a wide range of personalities and by placing those personalities in a chaotic and dangerous environment, which places both male and female characters on the same level of imminent danger, with outsiders offering a new perspective on traditional human conceptions. She explores many different aspects of feminist literary theory and offers new ways of perceiving and understanding gender in general, therefore challenging its traditional representation in speculative fiction. So is 'Lagoon' a feminist novel? Gender representation is a type of research done under the pretext of the philosophical discourse of feminist theory, which, among other practices, investigates the gender roles that define a societal norm. The topics which are subject to investigation when trying to establish gender roles deal with issues under the precept of different feminist disciplines, such as the psychological background of the ‘mind / body dichotomy’ which is described in Susan Bordo’s book 'Unbearable Weight'. It asserts that throughout time the typical gender role of the woman has established itself to be represented by the body, while, for men, it is represented by the mind. This, of course, leads to several issues for women, which are also relevant topics in 'Lagoon'. For example, oppression and sexual objectification are still mentioned frequently as problematic topics calling for feminist action. Okorafor presents several characters in her novel who struggle with those issues.

Author: Ina Batzke
Publisher: transcript Verlag
ISBN: 3839440270
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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The fantastic represents a wide and heterogeneous field in literary, cultural, and media studies. Encompassing some of the field's foremost voices such as Fred Botting and Larissa Lai, as well as exciting new perspectives by junior scholars, this volume offers a mosaic of the fantastic now. The contributions pinpoint and discuss current developments in theory and practice by offering enlightening snapshots of the contemporary Anglophone landscape of research in the fantastic. The authors' arguments and analyses thus give new impetus to the field's theoretical and methodological approaches, its textual materials, its main interests, and its crucial findings.

Author: Timothy E. Brown
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119635861
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Explore the fascinating historical and contemporary philosophical issues that arise in Black Panther In Black Panther and Philosophy: What Can Wakanda Offer The World, a diverse panel of experts delivers incisive critical reflections on the Oscar-winning 2018 film, Black Panther, and the comic book mythology that preceded it. The collection explores historical and contemporary issues—including colonialism, slavery, the Black Lives Matter movement, intersectionality, and identity—raised by the superhero tale. Beyond discussions of the influences of race and ethnicity on the most critically and culturally significant movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, this book presents the moral, feminist, metaphysical, epistemological, existential, and Afrofuturistic issues framing Black Panther’s narrative. The explorations of these issues shed light on our increasingly interconnected world and allow the reader to consider engaging questions like: Should Wakanda rule the world? Was Killmonger actually a victim? Do Wakanda’s Black Lives Matter? Does hiding in the shadows make Wakanda guilty? What does Wakanda have to offer the world? Perfect for fans of the most culturally significant film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Black Panther and Philosophy will also earn a place in the libraries of students of philosophy and anyone with a personal or professional interest in the defining issues of our time.

Author: Sandra J. Lindow
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476683328
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This work is the first book-length scholarly treatment of Nnedi Okorafor's critically acclaimed fiction. Written for an audience that includes serious fans as well as scholars, it is an introduction to Okorafor's work and major influences. The scope of the text is ambitious, featuring detailed analyses of her novels, short story collection, memoir, comics and graphic novel. Particular emphasis is given to Okorafor's most enduring themes, which include healthy young adult development and decision making, the interweaving of fantasy and science fiction, flight as a unifying force and the use of innovative biotechnology in ecological utopian communities. Influences examined include feminism, Afrofuturist and Africanfuturist movements and African mythology. Chapters also detail Okorafor's examinations of colonialism and corporate neocolonialism in Africa and Africa's potential to become a major world power.