Modern Griots Reviews: Nova Sparks’ ‘Dome’

The first in its trilogy, Nova Spark‘s apocalyptic, alien novel Dome is filled with characters figuring themselves out as their home disappears and a new questionable home arises that forces them to find the truth and what is real home. Alternating between the point of views of a father and daughter, Sam and Emma, the […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Elizabeth Nunez ‘s Books of Caribbean Magic

Next week, Elizabeth Nunez will be read from her memoir, Not for Everyday Use, at the fifth annual ringShout event, which will be the Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend event. The event will take place September 16 at 7pm at the Franklin Park Bar and Beer Garden in Brooklyn, and also features Bridgett M. Davis (Into the […]

Modern Griots Reviews: Rasheedah Phillips’ “Recurrence Plot and Other Time Travel Tales”

*Become a patron and support my blog and other writing endeavors on Patreon! __________ Experiment: Write a letter to your future self or past self. Try to meditate and astral project yourself into the body of one of those selves before or while you are writing to do so. Can you remember past and future […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Caribbean Futurisms

Thank you Kelly Baker Josephs for calling my attention to this! Conor Tomás Reed did a post describing “Caribbean Futurisms” and listing a few books that would fall under the term as well as other sources for Afrofuturism, in which I was included: “Considered within this conditional crux, Caribbean cultural forms have developed a conscious […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Catherine Acholonu and Molara Ogundipe

Hey everyone! I am back after taking a short needed break. Last week marked the third year that I have been running this blog! Yay! Happy Anniversary! Today I return to highlight a few writers I found out about after reading Bilphena Yahwon’s post on Africa Is Done Suffering, “The Writers I Never Learned About.” […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Books for Healing

Last Sunday, I attended Beatbox Botanicals‘ first Harriet’s Apothecary event. Besides having a relaxing and soothing experience, listening to over an hour of sound healing session, learning how to do tinctures and having a divination reading done, I also gathered a few book titles at the event: * African American Folk Healing by Stephanie Mitchem

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Digital Griots and Does Africa Dream of Androids?

While searching for random stuff through the internet again, I came across Adam Joel Banks 2011 book, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age. The book looks at the intersections between African American cultures and community building, and new technology and new media, the intersections between tradition and innovation and the constant search […]

The My-Stery: The Legba Circuit in Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’

Two of my favorites quotations from Invisible Man: “Beware of those who speak of the spiral of history; they are preparing a boomerang. Keep a steel helmet handy” and “The old is ever new.” Today is Ralph Ellison’s Birthday and he would have been his 100th birthday. So, here is a taste (a short summary) of […]

Modern Griots Recap: Highlights from Black Comic Book Festival

Attending the Black Comic Book Festival for the first time this year introduced me to a wide scope of the comic book world from the lens of the black community and so I wanted to share some of the creators and their works that I came across while there. It was difficult walking around the […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Curwen Best

I was searching for Caribbean science fiction, which is frustrating because most of the first results are for Pirates of the Caribbean (ugh!), but anyway, I stumbled across Bajan scholar Curwen Best and his analyses of the intersections between technology, the internet, social and other media, and Caribbean culture and identity. He has written a […]