Cosmic Ghost at the Museum: Notes from Kindred Book Club

Here’s the third recap from The Shadows Took Shape exhibition. Today, I am sharing the notes and questions (some thoughts came after the club) from the book club for Octavia Butler’s Kindred with moderators Rasheedah Phillips of The Afrofuturist Affair and artist John Jennings. First, notes from Rasheedah’s presentation, Time, Memory and Agency *The mechanics […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Phantom Limb, Octavia Butler’s “Kindred,” and Tiphanie Yanique’s “How to Escape from a Leper Colony”

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 […]

Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth: Nathaniel Mackey’s “Sound and Sentience”

I wrote before about how limbo is a tangible dance recovery of the phantom limb or broken connection (a tangible made into an intangible) produced by the Atlantic between Africa and the Americas. Poet and writer Nathaniel Mackey also has written about it in his poems and essays, like “Sound and Sentiment, Sound and Symbol,” […]