Moving on the Wires: ‘The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics’

Louis Chude-Sokei, the author of The Last ‘Darky‘: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora, will be releasing a new book, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics. Chude-Sokei, as he has done in his previous work, explores the complexities of race and ethnicity through a Caribbean lens. As someone who calls myself Afro-Caribbean-American, I […]

Modern Griots Review: Wangechi Mutu’s A Fantastic Journey

To have a fantastic imagination requires a fluidity of perception of reality and that encapsulates Wangechi Mutu’s exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, A Fantastic Journey. Mutu’s medium of collage artwork provides a natural basis for her ideas that combine an ancient mythic and animistic values with the futuristic cyborg concepts to comment on global modern […]

The My-Stery: The Different American Realities We Have and Politics of Proof – RIP Trayvon Martin

I feel genuinely weakened and tired from the not guilty verdict given to the George Zimmerman case. I was not shocked by it, but it did feel like another painful smack in the face after you’ve already been beaten several times. During the whole trial, two quotations from Malcolm X came to mind: “If you […]

Moving on the Wires: Africa Now, Spider Stories, Steamfunk!, Peoples Science…

*Tonight at 6:30pm, live podcast for “African Women and Girl Storytellers in the Digital Age.” *This weekend at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre, Blitz the Ambassador, Nneka, Freshlyground, The Soil and Lokua Kanza will be performing at Africa Now! I will be there at Saturday’s concert. * Kickstarter campaign for animated series, Spider Stories, pilot. Here is […]

Modern Griots Recap: The Outsider in Science Fiction Panel

I am one who likes to believe in synchronicity and having watched a National Geographic documentary a few days ago called, “When Aliens Attack,” this panel at the Museum of the Moving Image happened at the right time. What does our encounters and representations of the outsider or “alien” reveal about our psyches? On Sunday, […]

The My-Stery: Save the Pearls Reveals A Fear of the Future

“If we let them be in control, they will get revenge. They will do to us what we did to them.” I believe these are probably the thoughts that are and have been on the minds of many Americans; many who will state that they want their country back or that they need to preserve […]

President Obama as an Alien

Washington Post writer, E.J. Dionne Jr., wrote a piece about the ridiculous disrespect of Barack Obama as president: “They say that President Obama is a Muslim, but if he isn’t, he’s a secularist who is waging war on religion. On some days he’s a Nazi, but on most others he’s merely a socialist. His especially […]

The My-Stery: Futures of Color

Although the main focus of this blog is afrofuturism, all people of color are in the speculative realm as well: From Butcharri “Why POC need Science-Fiction and Fantasy… You know one thing that I’ve found in being a creative and a person of color is that attempting to get POC to collaborate on something that […]

Enough Monkeying Around

“The Rise of Planet of the Apes” came out in theaters this month. Entertainment is never just entertainment; it is always feeding into the zeitgeist of the time. So, I started to think about the use of monkeys and apes in media, especially film, and their social and even racial symbolism. Is it a coincidence […]

Art and Capitalism In a Post-Modern World

Last semester, I took a classed called “The Art of the Other” (“Black and Latino Art”). Our teacher, Vilna Bashi Treitler, introduced us to two books, “Ways of Seeing” and “Believing is Seeing: Creating the Culture of Art,” and a number of articles from which we had to question “What Is Art,” “What is Black […]