Hey there! It's Olivia-Savannah here from Olivia’s Catastrophe and today we're here to talk all about
afrofuturism for young adults.
So this year is my final – well, was my final year of university and I wrote a dissertation
on young adult afrofuturism. And I did promise to talk about it in videos and
I didn't know how to format it, how to do this. But we're just going to try and do it this way.
And I’m going to explain it to you. So first of all I’m going to talk about the books that I
looked at and used while writing my afrofuturism dissertation. And then I’m going to run through
some of the concepts that I discussed and talked about in my dissertation without referring to
the books. Because in the actual dissertation of course, it does spoil some aspects of the novels.
And hopefully by doing so we can talk about the books but also talk about the concepts.
So first of all I just wanted to spotlight a non-fiction book that was incredibly helpful
to me while writing my dissertation. Of course, I had to do research and use other literary journals
and sources and such. But I really appreciated afrofuturism by Yatasha L Womack. And if you're
just learning to -- wanting to learn more about afrofuturism, generally I do recommend reading
this one. Not only does it look at literature but it looks at music, it looks at dance, it looks at
different aspects of the culture. So you can hear from a range of artists and creators but you can
also see some of its use in literature. And it was just so clear and concise and to the point.
And I really value non-fiction where even though it's a textbook style non-fiction I could read
this very quickly and read my way through it. I enjoyed reading this and highlighting it and
learning from it. So I definitely recommend this if you're looking for a non-fiction book
about afrofuturism. And then I focused on four US young adult afrofuturist texts.
And I drew examples from these books during my dissertation. And one of the ones that I really
loved was Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi. And this one follows Ella and Kevin who are these children
who live in a gang-ridden neighbourhood. And Ella has this special thing this power that she
wields when she's angry. And Kevin gets arrested and sent to prison. And she is
wondering whether or not she should use her power to bust him out of prison.
I think it has a lot of commentary to do with prison abolishment but also racism within
the imprisonment system. And it was all just so perfectly done. The ending is haunting and I
really really recommend this book. I also used The Black Gods Drums by P. Djeli Clark as an example.
And this one is a young adult, more so Caribbean focused work. And in this one we follow our main
character who really wants to go on an airship and escape the world that she's always known. And she
has this goddess living within her called Oya who whispers certain things to her. And has wants of
its own as well. And when she meets the captain of this airship it's her one chance to escape.
And she would do anything to take it on. And when a terrorist attack is impending lots of
things are going to go down and I’ll just leave it there. And I thought this was a fantastic story.
I loved the character development of not only our main character, but the person she ends up
you know, spending a lot of time with in this novel. And it has some very interesting
commentary to do with history and how this world is set up because it's got steampunk vibes to it
as well. I also used the first book in the Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor and I’m glad I hadn't
read the whole series by then because I would have wanted to use them all. But in truth I should have
only used this one and did only use this one. And in this first one we follow Binti who is a tribal
Black person who gets a chance to go to this very prestigious university. Her parents don't want her
to go but she sneaks away and goes anyway. And she has to take a spaceship essentially, to get
to the university. And along the way something significant happens which changes everything.
And I thought this was a fantastic novella. It touches on so many themes despite being so short.
And it's got a very interesting concept of aliens as well which was very useful for writing
my dissertation. Last but not least I also looked at Slay by Brittney Morris which is about a Black
teenage girl who creates a virtual reality safe space game for fellow Black people. However,
when a murder happens because of her game, her game is thrust into the spotlight and people start
to say that it's like, anti-white and exclusionary because it's only for Black people. And it's about
her dealing with the repercussions of this. This was my least favourite of all the ones that I
studied but it still has so much commentary on the contemporary young adult Black experience that I
really just had to use it in my dissertation. And it provided a lot of material. I’ve got a bit of a
script so if you see me looking down it's because I’m trying to look at my notes. But I’m going
to try my very best to summarise my very long dissertation in a few minutes if I possibly can.
So in the beginning I define afrofuturism and what afrofuturism is and the purpose of it. Which
can be for Black people to see themselves in their own stories, it can be about decentering whiteness
from the narrative, an intersection of future and liberation and the idea of history. But most
importantly I think afrofuturism is constantly changing. It's a constant reimagining of what it
means to live the Black experience. Chapter one of my dissertation I talk about aliens in alien
technology because there is a long history of Black people feeling other and feeling othered
because they are Black. Because they are not white and white has been decidedly assumed to be the
norm. And afrofuturism has long since been talking about you know, metaphors of alien technology and
aliens as a metaphor for the otherness that they experience. But I also talk about how in the
contemporary young adult afrofuturism, the main characters kind of accept that they are alien and
that they are other and they use that to embrace the freedom to be unnatural, to be different from
the norm. And they celebrate and enjoy the fact that they do not subscribe to the norm
of whiteness. And because of this the diaspora can shed any concepts of predetermined ideas of what
Black means because there have been stereotypes of Blackness that have been founded and created by
white and Western culture that are not necessarily true. And Black people sometimes feel a need to
fit into those categories that they've been given fit into those descriptors. Whereas truly
Black people can be anything and afrofuturism shows that they don't have to subscribe to this
norm that is being pressured onto them. Which is especially important for young adults to see
as they are growing and developing themselves. I also talk about the transatlantic slave trade and
how slavery has long since been a metaphor like, how alien abduction has long since been a metaphor
for slavery. However, in contemporary young adult afrofuturism the narrative is shifted a little
bit to focus on the legacy of slavery because these younger generations have not experienced
slavery first hand, but they still live with some of the consequences and after effects
of carrying the weight of this history. But also needing to progress and move past it. I also talk
about how there are other diasporas other than the Black diaspora, other than the afro-caro
diaspora that they can team up with. The Latin and the Asian diasporas have as well suffered
at the hands of racism in different ways. And how young adult contemporary afrofuturism talks about
the different discriminations that people face and how much value that there can be
when these different diasporas work together unanimously to fight for equality together.
Although these experiences of course, are different, are separate. The fact that they've all
been made to feel other groups them and connects them in ways that can be so beneficial for working
towards a better future. And the symbol of the ship is very important in young adult afrofuturism
because of the fact of the slavery ships and how those symbolise displacement and lost identity.
However, I argue that in young adult afrofuturism the symbol of the ship does not only mean lost
identity, but it means a reclaiming of identity as well. Because in many cases we see that ship
moving towards education. We see that ship moving towards a better future. And it's not that we've
lost our culture anymore. Now we know our culture, we're aware of our culture. But instead this ship
is bringing us closer to our histories. This shift is bringing us closer to the new knowledge
and the new ways in which we are developing as a diaspora from the suffering that we've achieved in
the past. And I think what afrofuturism is very much doing so now is blaming the oppressors for
the oppression that people have faced rather than blaming the community themselves. I think
in classic afrofuturism sometimes there seemed to be an idea that if Black people worked harder
or tried harder they could have remembered and retained more of their history. But however, that
is clearly not the case when you have to focus on survival and day by day living. And therefore,
now the narrative is putting that attention on the oppressors and saying this is your problem,
you need to fix that. This is what you've done to us. What are you going to do for reparations? How
are we going to move forward living in a world where the oppressed and the oppressors have to
work together and live together? And they also talk about some of the forms of oppression
that the oppressed have learned to reciprocate and repeat themselves. For example, colourism.
Things like colourism are definitely a way to desegregate the community itself to make the
diaspora turn against itself. Colourism and also Black elitism thinking that you have to ascribe
to a certain level of education or a certain attitude to be Black enough to be considered part
of the community. That's definitely a problem. That's just a way of separating the diaspora
and segmenting it so that they can never work in union with each other and fight the truthful
issue of racism. And I talk about that a little bit in my dissertation as well. Then I talk
about some of the contemporary consequences of historical slavery. And one of the ones I look
at closely is prison abolishment because there are a large percentage of Black people in prisons
providing free labour under consequences of their imprisonment. Some of these imprisonments are done
unjustly some of these imprisonments are very long. And of course, there is the overpolicing
of certain areas so that they are more likely to end up in prison. Alongside the fact that people
are being tracked and conditioned even after their imprisonment sentence and having to fulfill
certain requirements even after they have been released. Talk about and discuss ghettoization as
an element of economic suppression and systemic racism. And how keeping the Black community
low on the economic scale is limiting their abilities to receive education and to receive good
jobs and employment that will help them progress and move towards the enlightenment that they have
been denied for so long. Then I talk about the concept of reclaiming. This was coined in an
interview, I think, with Maxine where she talked about reclaiming her time. And I also learned
about this more in Emma Dabiri’s book Don’t Touch My Hair. And I talk about the different
things that the young adult afrofuturism genre is encouraging Black teenagers to reclaim. One of
those is definitely language. Now we have what you call AAVE, which is African-American vernacular
English. Which is just a way that we talk. Well, I say we -- the way that they talk because I am
not African-American. And then you've also got creole. Creole can be in different communities.
So Jamaican patois and you know, Canadian creole are not the same style of speaking.
But you can have books that are written in these vernaculars to encourage readers to reclaim that
language for themselves. To reclaim the way that they need to speak. Of course, in history it was
an idea that you had to speak a certain way to be seen as just. You're to speak queen's English with
proper grammar and all of that jazz to be seen as closer to white and Western culture. However,
that's not the case. And in some of these books we see the teenagers struggling with code switching
and language switching depending on where they are and what they're doing. And I know that I do this
myself. And it's very hard to turn off when it's you know, automatic and when you've been ingrained
to do that. With certain people you can speak a certain way and it's safe to speak a certain way.
And I feel like there's one of these books where the character talks about how it's less about the
ways in which we speak, and more about the way that other people perceive us when we speak in
a certain way. And that was just so true. I had to write about it. So not only is reclaiming
language powerful, but when you get books that are published in that vernacular it shows that
you can be you know academic. You can have your own book out and speak in your vernacular. And be
just as justified. Reclaiming the concept of Blackness because there are stereotypes that
have been put in place as I said before, by white and Western culture on what it means to be Black.
I’ve been told, ‘wow, I read a lot for a Black girl.’ What does that even mean?? What is that
supposed to mean? Black people can travel, they can go anywhere, they can study anything. They
don't just have to be good at sports, you know. Black people can go into the writing industry,
Black people can go into the -- I don't know -- culinary arts industry if they want to. We're
not just good at sports and that's it. And some of these stereotypes have been really ingrained
over the years. And it's talking about reclaiming the areas and the industries that people try to
push us out of simply because of skin colour and race. Then I talk about the false idea of the
diaspora or one Black person as a monolith. One Black person does not represent all Black people
and all ideas. And I especially examine the fact that my own dissertation is focusing on American
afrofuturism and yet is being written by a British Caribbean writer studying in the UK. Because
that's what it is. I feel like a lot of Afro-American culture is has been made
synonymous with the Black experience. As in that is the only Black experience. But that is not the
case. Carofuturism exists which is all Caribbean based futurism. And I didn't get a chance to read
The Chaos by Nalo Hopkinson which is what I wanted to read to discuss this more in my essay. But I
still touch on it and how carofuturism is doing the same thing. I also mentioned Nnedi Okorafor's
blog post that she wrote on Africanfuturism and also Africanjujuism and how those are subgenres
of afrofuturism which are slightly different. I’ll leave a link to the blog post down below.
But are slightly different in what they're doing and in terms of what they're discussing.
And yet that is still the Black experience. And of course, I don't even touch on the fact about,
you know, the Black queer experience and also the Black Australian experience. There's just so much
to the Black experience and yet a lot of it has been generalized to be part of the afro-futurism,
the Afro-American culture. I talk about the over-saturation of Black suffering stories and how
the victimizing of Black bodies and Black space. And how Black suffering is very popular at the
moment. And a call and a need for Black joy. And how even though it's very important to showcase
and make people aware of the Black suffering that they experience and so people know what they need
to face, and that young adults can be given the tools to face these issues, they also equally need
to see stories about Black joy and Black people thriving and Black people celebrating. Because
if you do not imagine and envision these Black joys how on earth can we strive to achieve them
ourselves? Of course, I have to talk about police brutality and wielding of anger. I especially take
the time to focusing on Black anger and wielding Black anger for better because I feel like a lot
of afrofuturism for young adults is showing people that it's okay to be angry and how to wield that
anger to make a difference. But also that wielding this anger and the protest is not the only way to
fight back. There's always this discussion of whether Black people being in education
is beneficial to the rebellion because you know, if they're educated they can fight in legal terms,
in law terms kind of like the NAACP. But at the same time education takes generations,
it takes time and the suffering is happening right now. We need that anger, we need that action,
we need that protest. And I discuss the balance between the two. The pros and cons of the two
and ultimately settle on the fact that you need a mixture of both. It does not have to be either or.
I also talk about police brutality and how an oversaturation of police brutality stories can
lend into the Black suffering popularity and oversaturation, and yet they're still
incredibly necessary because of all the police brutality that we're seeing still going on today.
And ultimately I talk about how these books give young adults quite a few tools that they can use
to be part of the rebellion. It doesn't just have to be on the streets protest to be part
of rebellion. It can be learning, it can be being happy in yourself and celebrating your culture,
it can be losing that shame. And it's just all of these elements combined. And in conclusion I talk
about how young adult afrofuturism is not that different from adult futurism. It's just shifting
its narrative a bit to focus on the young adults and the problems that they are facing but also
acknowledging the issues that the adults have faced in history and are currently facing too.
And while it is showcasing Black joy it's all about continuing the revolution that their
ancestors have set up for the fight for racial equality. But I also talk about how there still
needs to be more done to make the diaspora an inclusive space. We need equal understanding
and appreciating of the differences in the Black experience. And even in my whole dissertation I
didn't even start to touch on the disabled Black community, the queer Black community and how these
communities are being left out of the Black afro-futurist stories and need to be included,
because it's only by coming together as a diaspora in its totality with all our marginalisations that
we can really truly unanimously fight back. And lastly I finish on the fact that afrofuturism
shows us utopians where racism doesn't exist, shows us utopians where Black people are
celebrating their culture and themselves. And while there is Black suffering happening it
gives young adults the belief and the hope that the future can be different. And there you have
it. That's my afrofuturism dissertation. This video was quite education heavy
and concept and thematic heavy. I couldn't really focus on the books without giving the game away
but maybe if you've read some of these books you can see which books I would have lent on for which
examples… Match the concept to the example! Please let me know in the comment section down below:
what is your favourite afrofuturist novel? Or if you haven't read one, what is one that you intend
to read? Give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, hit the subscribe button
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every time I have a new video. And you know what they say: onwards and upwards. Excelsior!