Enjoy these two videos that I recently saw that include themes about earth and nature from a speculative fiction angle. Also, take a look at Outdoor Afro, a social community encouraging the exploration of nature.
Heal our World Heal Ourselves campaign
The Paper to Pen production, which is Charles Weldon-directed, is the creative child of Anthony J. Dixon and Sandra J. Barnes, the writers of the story, music and lyrics. Dixon’s motivation was to “chronicle a young woman’s journey and challenges faced while maneuvering through life with modern media influences,” and began the process by working with Barnes and spoke to women of all ages about their perspectives.
Futurology follows three female intergalactic travelers from the year 2413, Captain Gaines (Gabrielle Lee), Lieutenant Mirvan (Tracie Franklin), and the android Mokia #1 (Vasthy Mompoint). On a journey in their spaceship, “The Saturn Majestic,” they are pulled towards the cries of a woman from the past in 2013, Darima Spencer, who will be an important messiah-like figure in history, but at the moment is feeling lost since her mother died and her father is absent, and seems to be more interested in becoming a star than giving her speech at a community rally with her boyfriend, Gregory (Rodrick Covington).
“Motherpounder!” That left me speechless! And by speechless, I am talking about Kenya Wright’s sequel to Fire Baptized, The Burning Bush. In this novel, Wright takes readers deeper into the fantasy world of the Santeria Habitat and main character, Lanore Vesta, expanding on the history and relationships of the beings who live there.
Opening with the bombing of the Linderman’s Blood Factory by her organization MFE (Mixbreeds for Equality) and the shapeshifting Rebels, Lanore’s world becomes chaotic once again as she is dragged back into being an amateur detective solving the murders of two women while trying to enact revenge on the Vampire Dante Botteli, who owns the factory, for killing mixbreeds. Trying to solve the murders, Lanore realizes that who she thought was her enemy and who she thought she could trust may not be so true, and that her problems are much bigger than Dante or even the habitat.
Lanore’s character is the brains in the book; she is observant and logical in her thinking even when others around her may be incompetent, particularly the habbie detective Rivera. The second book in the Habitat series shows Wrights ability in fantasy world-building and characterization; she creates a world that is strange and exciting, yet feels familiar. She is great with the imagery (I can picture it as a film) and providing detailed descriptions of the characters and the cities they are from in the habitat. For example, Wright gives us a look into shapeshifters grieving process and their “seasons” (puberty) and the different types of elemental witches and how they look.
We are also introduced to more characters, like Zulu’s (Lanore’s boyfriend) curious sister, Cassie, the next Palero, Angel, and Lanore’s mentally unstable, druggie demon father, Graham, as well as seeing the connection between main characters deepen. The love triangle between Lanore, Zulu, the MFE leader, and Meshack returns. Meshack constantly flirts with Lanore despite her new relationship with Zulu creating tension, but these scenes often provide needed breaks or moments of levity balancing the tragic moments throughout the book that had me almost in tears.
The only issue with the book is that sometimes the sexual scenes can be a bit too much, specifically at the end. I would have preferred a different memory of one of the characters so that it would not have been so striking of a scene and would have given us a different look into the relationship. But then again, that could have been the connecting essence of their relationship. Other than that, Wright has written another strong story and I can’t wait for the next book. By the way, when you read about Graham, I am kind of picturing Keith David as him in a film, if I haven’t made it obvious that I would like to see this as a film.
Actress Ethosheia Hylton will be playing Adesuwa, who connects spiritually with the orisha of storms and change, Oya, in the upcoming film Oya: Rise of the Orishas. Below is her interview and donate to the Indiegogo campaign:
But I also wanted to do a list of kickass actresses who would be great Oyas as well and take a look at other blogs’ lists (Gangstarr Girl and Divas and Dorks, too:
In Octavia Butler’s time-traveling fantasy Kindred, the novel begins with the main character, Dana, losing her arm. Even without the ending, that is an unusual way to begin a story. Similarly, Tiphanie Yanique‘s mythic/mystical/religious storytelling in her short story collection How to Escape from a Leper Colony, includes in the title story, a character named Deepa who has leprosy in her arm and is danger of being cut off. Other stories in her book feature crumbling bridges that attempt to connect Caribbean islands and the people on it turning into birds, two symbols of transcendence. The main theme of Yanique’s collection is that of traveling and love (she opens it with the prayer of Saint Raphael, the saint of lover and travelers: “Lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us.”).
If I had read both of these earlier last year, I probably would not have seen the connection, but after having read Nathaniel Mackey’s and Wilson Harris’ work on phantom limb and limbo, their works make much more sense. The stories in both books represent a dismembering of and an attempt at re-membering for the characters. Time travel, memory (think of pegasus and the hippocampus), stories, love and even to an extent religion symbolize our efforts to reconnect with something we have loss or feel is missing. The phantom limb is essentially the brain remembering the physical limb despite it not being there; the same for memory in general of trying to hold onto a physical person, event or thing.
Below are videos of the conversations and lectures from the Alien Bodies Conference that took place in February:
Keynote with Alondra Nelson
*Tonight illustrator and animator Tim Fielder will be sharing his work Matty’s Rocket– an episodic-animated series & web comic. The event will have guest appearances and readings from writers Liza Jessie Peterson and Melanie Maria Goodreaux. They will read Afrofuturistic pieces aloud while Fielder will illustrate their work on the spot!
*Accra Dot Alt will be returning tonight with their Talk Party Series in Ghana celebrating singer Tawiah’s mixtape Freedom Drop.
*Today, the filmmakers for the upcoming film, Oya: Rise of the Orisha, opened their Indiegogo page. The film “focuses on a young woman named Adesuwa who has the unique ability to transform into the fearsome warrior goddess, Oya, the Orisha of change. When she changes, she gains amazing abilities. We follow Adesuwa as she goes on a head-stomping mission to keep the doorway between the Orisha and humanity closed. Be prepared for an action packed , mystical adventure as we explore the world of the Orisha.”
UK Writer Duane F.L. Wharton‘s short, time-bending film Yesterday’s Tomorrow starring Ewan David Alman, Mazie Rhodes and paralympian Gaz Choudhry. Wharton is currently working on a fantasy drama Walking with Azrael (2013), which is about angels.
Part two below:
The Next Big Thing Hop: the traveling blog that asks authors who they consider the NEXT BIG THING, and then has them pass along the questions for those authors to answer in their blogs.
Thank you Valjeanne Jeffers for tagging me! Read hers here.
Rules are: Answer ten questions about your current Work In Progress on your blog. Tag five writers / bloggers and add links to their pages so we can hop along to them next.
What is the working title of your book…
The working title is “…And the Water Breaks…”.
After reading Ebony’s “7 Black Writers You Should Know,” I wanted to highlight a couple of them in a post. Besides technology reporter Jenna Wortham and her Girl Crush Zine, and Uzoamaka Maduka attempt to revilitalize the American literary magazine with The American Reader. the two writers that stood out to me were Kyla Marshell and Jason Parham. Below is an apocalyptic poem from Marshell in which black people will live on through their hair:
We’ll Always Have Négritude
won’t we? he asks, reaching for my tiny brown
hand. when credits roll in black & white,
& FIN flashes bright across the final frame,
we’ll still be black as vice—won’t we?
he wants to know what happens
to The Last Black Man on Earth
in The Last Black Man on Earth without waiting
for the tentative sequel, after we applaud & lights
come up & someone nameless sweeps our popcorn kernels
into a vortex-shaped box. is that where
The Last Black Man on Earth goes after we’ve
learned no animals were harmed in the making
of this production? does he fade into the white
light of Colored Heaven (which is a real place),
or fall to a fate worse than death—Vermont?
don’t worry, i say to my panicked date,
his hands atremble. The Last Black Man on Earth
finds his way home through the overturned cars
and fallen trees. the sun begins again, & so does he.
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