Black Girl Spells Home: Africanfuturism Magics a Different Existence

• In Event: Decolonizing Magic as Research Method, Narrative Practice, and Instructional Design

Abstract

Singer-songwriter FKA Twigs crooned, “Never seen a hero like me in a sci-fi” (FKA twigs, 2019). This is not an unfamiliar sentiment among many diasporic Black women. Despite the presence of authors such as Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, and Tanarive Due, access to Black women-authored and -led science fiction was relatively inaccessible for Black women readers (Toliver, 2018). However, current popular culture trends have brought to the forefront Black speculative, Afrofuturist, and Africanfuturist genres and have produced an alternative contemporary landscape for diasporic Black girls and women to witness and envision themselves and their communities. Within this ever-expanding narrative plenitude (Nguyen, 2016), this paper investigates the pedagogical and curricular possibilities of introducing Africanfuturistic texts into secondary school classrooms. Containing this project’s focus on Africanfuturism permits me to center the narratives, experiences, and practices of indigenous Africans as well as first- and second-generation Africans outside of the continent.

Through the content analysis of Okorafor’s Who Fears Death duology, a line of inquiry emerges to understand the implications of Africanfuturistic texts in secondary classrooms. The data collection and analysis focuses on the production of contemporary Africanfuturistic texts, including interviews from the authors; mapping of the books’ plotlines, character designs, and design; mapping of trends in digital searches regarding the texts. The content analysis specifically hones in on the use of magic by women protagonists to reimagine their world and shape it into worthy of their existence. Engaging with this inquiry offers a launching pad into these genres' pedagogical and curricular potential in secondary classrooms. Africanfuturism centers on the “lived experiences, traditions, spiritualities and stories” of Africans while also featuring an Africa “that has a stake in national, global, and universal affairs” (Author 4, 2022). These texts also simultaneously critique problematic texts that have reified damage- and trauma-centered iterations of the continent and its peoples. A subtle and unstated through-line for Africanfuturism is its postcolonial nature – which seeks to upend notions of modernity and progress and honoring the traditions of the indigenous, while altogether imagining a world that can encapsulate a mélange of progress and tradition that benefits all.

Lastly, this inquiry widens the scope of culturally responsive and sustaining practices by attending to the nuances of contemporary and future cultural identities and experiences. This project is a process of (re)membering (Dillard, 2012) and re-learning of truths and possibilities. These speculative Africanfuturistic texts are more than mirrors, windows, and doors; the introduction of these texts into classroom may be able to upend what has been taken for granted as normal and dare us to (re)turn to a place of imagining and enacting greater.

Author

• Oluwaseun Animashaun, Teachers College, Columbia University