CARIBBEAN FUTURISMS
Resources for looking beyond the horizon
What’s included below is a broad and living collection of books, articles, music, art, videos etc. that, as Caribbean cultural forms, have been shaped by our capacity to play with time and space, magic and spirit, realties and unrealities…I invite fellow travelers to share their own mappings of Caribbean-centric cosmologies and related points of contact for Afro-Futurisms to add to this growing list.
Locating the Caribbean in Time and Space: Non-Fiction
C.L.R. James – The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
James writes a profoundly illuminating portrayal of the enslavement trade and successful Haitian revolution. The book is originally released in 1938 during the rise of fascism and Caribbean labor revolts, then in 1963 with a new appendix on the significance of the Cuban revolution and decolonization struggles, and then reprinted in 1989 during the rise of neoliberalism and global resistance to it.
Kamau Brathwaite – “Caribbean Man in Space and Time” (1975), “Note(s) on Caribbean Cosmology” (1996)
In these foundational essays of Caribbean Futurisms, Brathwaite critiques crudely developmental concepts of the region, gestures toward an underground of cultural meanings from which to chart alternatives, and sketches a typology of various all-too-hidden Caribbean cultural cosmologies. Brathwaite’s other works on poetry, language, and technologies have also contributed trajectories to Caribbean Futurisms.
Michel-Rolph Trouillot – Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995)
Trouillot unfolds a deeply insightful examination of the ideologically and materially dominant forms of historiography, using such mis-remembered events as the Haitian revolution and the “defense” of the Alamo, and presents a compelling approach for uncovering and narrating hidden histories.
Susan Buck-Morss – Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (2009)
In the counter-historiographical tradition of James, Buck-Morss redefines the center of Western philosophy’s gravity by arguing how G.W.F. Hegel’s conceptions of freedom and enslavement were directly inspired by the Haitian revolution, and further conjures new interpretations on how some of the revolution’s participants may have been religious scholars and Freemasons.
Kelly Baker Josephs – “Beyond Geography, Past Time: Afrofuturism, The Rainmaker’s Mistake, and Caribbean Studies” (2013)
Josephs lucidly conjoins the general characteristics of Afro-Futurism with a Caribbean Futurism created in Erna Brodber’s novel the Rainmaker’s Mistake. The author considers different conceptions of freedom that can be practiced in the realms of Africana science fiction and fantasy. In the process, the article thoroughly traces some foundational texts of Afro-Futurism, while making a case for a particular Caribbean cosmological field in which people can further dynamize the genre.
“The Work of Man has Only Just Begun: Legacies of Cesaire” (2013)
This interactive “Digital Humanities” approach to honoring the centennial of Aimé Césaire attempts new directions in cultural dialogue across time and space. Several academic scholars posted and responded to each other’s posts on a series of questions about Césaire’s legacy, and a dozens of participants crowd-sourced a digital bibliography of the author’s work.
The Caribbean Fantastical: Fictional Works
Karen Lord and Tobias S. Buckell - Reclaim, Restore, Return: Futurist Tales from the Caribbean
Published specially for the 2020 NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Reclaim, Restore, Return: Futurist Tales from the Caribbean is an e-book anthology of speculative fiction and poetry by seven Caribbean writers. Compiled and edited by Karen Lord and Tobias S. Buckell, and published by the Caribbean Futures Institute in partnership with the NGC Bocas Lit Fest, Reclaim, Restore, Return imagines possible futures for the Caribbean that should inspire us in the present.
More Karen Lord
The Redemption of Indigo (2010)
The Best of All Possible Worlds (2013)
The Galaxy Game (2014)
(ed) New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean (2016)
Unravelling (2020)
Douglas, Marcia - The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: a novel in bass riddim (2018)
“Is me―Bob. Bob Marley.” Reincarnated as homeless Fall-down man, Bob Marley sleeps in a clock tower built on the site of a lynching in Half Way Tree, Kingston. The ghosts of Marcus Garvey and King Edward VII are there too, drinking whiskey and playing solitaire. No one sees that Fall-down is Bob Marley, no one but his long-ago love, the deaf woman, Leenah, and, in the way of this otherworldly book, when Bob steps into the street each day, five years have passed. Jah ways are mysterious ways, from Kingston’s ghettoes to London, from Haile Selaisse’s Ethiopian palace and back to Jamaica, Marcia Douglas’s mythical reworking of three hundred years of violence is a ticket to the deep world of Rasta history. This amazing novel―in bass riddim―carries the reader on a voyage all the way to the gates of Zion.
Tiphanie Yanique - Land of Love and Drowning: A Novel (2018)
In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean Sea. Orphaned by the shipwreck are two sisters and their half brother, now faced with an uncertain identity and future. Each of them is unusually beautiful, and each is in possession of a particular magic that will either sink or save them.
Nalo Hopkinson - Skin Folk (2001)
In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best, spinning tales like “Precious,” in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In “A Habit of Waste,” a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she’s shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus. In “The Glass Bottle Trick,” the young protagonist ignores her intuition regarding her new husband’s superstitions—to horrifying consequences.
More Nalo Hopkinson
Brown Girl in the Ring (1998)
Midnight Robber (2000)
The Salt Roads (2003)
New Moon’s Arms (2007)
The Chaos (2012)
Sister Mine (2013)
(ed.) So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (2004)
Daniel Maximin – Lone Sun (1989)
Maximin offers a fictional Guadeloupean counter-point novel to James’ historical work, in which he loops across time the lives of people “from the days of slavery through its abolition in 1789, Napoleon’s invasion and the return of slavery, through WW II and Petainist rule” (Publishers Weekly), to the late 1960s. Notably, such Black power figures as Angela Davis and George Jackson find their way into the text’s nimble time frames.
Diasporic Galaxies: Additional Resources
Literatures:
Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man (1952)
In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. He describes growing up in a Black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of the Brotherhood, before retreating amid violence and confusion.
Amiri Baraka – “Suppose Sorrow Was a Time Machine” (1958), “Technology and Ethos” (1970)
John A. Williams – Captain Blackman (1988)
Captain Blackman is a U.S. soldier in Vietnam who becomes seriously wounded. As he drifts in and out of consciousness, he hallucinates back in time as a soldier in each of America's wars from 1775 to 1975. Named among the most important works of fiction of the decade by the New York Times Book Review when first published in 1972, Captain Blackman is the first book to be published in Coffee House Press's Black Arts Movement reprint series.
Samuel R. Delany
Dahlgren (1975)
Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. Into this disaster zone comes a young man--poet, lover, and adventurer--known only as the Kid.
Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.
Babel-17/Empire Star (1966)
Babel-17, winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy's deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack. For the first time, Babel-17 is published as the author intended with the short novel Empire Star, the tale of Comet Jo, a simple-minded teen thrust into a complex galaxy when he's entrusted to carry a vital message to a distant world. Spellbinding and smart, both novels are testimony to Delany's vast and singular talent.
Octavia E. Butler
Wild Seed: Book 1 in "The Patternist" Series (1980)
Set in the 17th and 18th centuries, Wild Seed follows immortals Doro and Anyanwu. Doro lives by stealing others bodies. He also created a small African society with the goal of achieving human perfection. Anyanwu is a shapeshifter with healing powers. After discovering one another, the two struggle to co-exist with their warring methods of survival.
Kindred (1979)
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
Parable of the Talents (1998)
In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction of her home and family, and realized her vision of a peaceful community in northern California based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed. The fledgling community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative president who vows to make America great again. In an increasingly divided and dangerous nation, Lauren's subversive colony--a minority religious faction led by a young black woman--becomes a target for President Jarret's reign of terror and oppression. Years later, Asha Vere reads the journals of a mother she never knew, Lauren Olamina. As she searches for answers about her own past, she also struggles to reconcile with the legacy of a mother caught between her duty to her chosen family and her calling to lead humankind into a better future.
Rivers Solomon
The Deep (2020)
Yetu holds the memories for her people--water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners--who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly is forgotten by everyone, save one--the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities--and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. Yetu will learn more than she ever expected about her own past--and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they'll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity--and own who they really are.
An Unkindness of Ghosts (2017)
Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world. Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot--if she's willing to sow the seeds of civil war.
DePauw University – Science Fictions Studies – special issue on Afrofuturism (2007)
Sounds:
Lee “Scratch” Perry - Babylon in Panic (2013)
Grace Jones - Slave to the Rhythm (1985)
Michelange Quay (electro vodou)
Airwo
Xenia França
Visual Arts:
Fritz St. Jean
Nari Ward
Sheena Rose
Paul Lewin
Caribbean: Crossroads of the World (2012)
An incredibly vast exhibition featuring over 500 artworks across four centuries in three non-Eurocentric New York City museums, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World signaled both exciting possibilities for trans-historio-spatial cultural exchange, and also a neocolonially commodifying project that sold “Caribbean passports” to see carefully selected representations of Caribbean artistry in austere artworld environments.
Film / Video:
The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry (2011)
Afrofuturism Explained: Not Just Black Sci-Fi | Inverse
Grace Jones: Bloodlight And Bami (2018)
Rasheeda Phillips - Dismantling the Master’s Clock[work] Universe (2018)
Afro Futurism and the Jamaican Stage (2020)
Mayra Santos-Febres - The Fractal Caribbean New Literatures of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic Thursday, September 12, 2019
Robert Antoni – As Flies to Whatless Boys (2013)
Antoni weaves together a mid-nineteenth century story of a family’s travel across the Atlantic into a doomed colonization experiment, and a contemporary novelist’s adventures in mining archive records in the Trinidad and Tobago national library. In specific annotated moments of the physical print novel’s narrative, the author invites the reader onto a virtual portal experience through a compendium website that includes short films and digitized print archives.
Academia:
Amy Ransom. (2013). Indigenous Futurism. Science Fiction Studies, 40(1), 167-169. doi:10.5621/sciefictstud.40.1.0167
Anderson, R. (2016). AFROFUTURISM 2.0 & THE BLACK SPECULATIVE ARTS MOVEMENT: Notes on a Manifesto. Obsidian, 42(1/2), 228-236. Retrieved September 22, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44489514
Bakare, L. (2014, July 24). Afrofuturism takes flight: From Sun Ra to Janelle Monáe. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jul/24/space-is-the-place-flying-...
Enright, J. (2020, August 28). Afro-Indigenous Futurisms and Decolonizing Our Minds. Retrieved September 22, 2020, from https://www.mnartists.org/article/afro-indigenous-futurisms-and-decoloni...
Gaye Theresa Johnson, Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement in Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), xxii.
GIPSON, G. (2019). Creating and Imagining Black Futures through Afrofuturism. In De Kosnik A. & Feldman K. (Eds.), #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation (pp. 84-103). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Retrieved September 23, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv9md.9
Johnson, C. (2018, April 12). La Mecánica Popular: Radical Afro-Latin Futurism. Retrieved September 21, 2020, from https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2018/04/12/601802866/la-mec-nica-...
Rodriguez, K. D. (2020). Afro-Latinx Futurism: A History of Black and Brown Arts from 1781–2018. UCLA. ProQuest ID: Rodriguez_ucla_0031D_19070. Merritt ID: ark:/13030/m5b61x77. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20s8s43x
Schuyler Esprit, Keynote: Digital experimentation, courageous citizenship, and Caribbean futurism, Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, Volume 36, Issue Supplement_1, June 2021, Pages i9–i14, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqaa034
Victoria Miceli. (2017). The Indigenous Future is Now. Science Fiction Studies, 44(2), 375-379. doi:10.5621/sciefictstud.44.2.0375
Armas, Ramiro. (2017). The Perverse Looks and Sounds of Caribbean Vanguards: Futurism in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. 10.1515/9783110527834-009.
Rupert Lewis (2011) “Mirror Mirror on the Wall/Who is the Fairest of Them All?”, Caribbean Quarterly, 57:3-4, 33-48, DOI: 10.1080/00086495.2011.11672415
SOURCES:
https://digitalcaribbean.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2014/02/01/caribbean-futurisms/
SUPPLEMENTAL READING
(Resources from the paper “Masquerade as a site for Caribbean Futurism)
Akọma, C., & Scholz, S. J. (2009). Virtuous Bacchanalia: Creolizing Rousseau’s Festival. The CLR James Journal, 15(1), 206–227. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26770024
Anthony, M (1989). Parade of the Carnivals of Trinidad & Tobago, 1839-1989. Circle Press
Benítez Rojo Antonio. (1992). The repeating island : the caribbean and the postmodern perspective. Duke University Press.
Bennett, Michael. “Afrofuturism.” Computer (Long Beach, Calif.) 49.4 (2016): 92–93. Web.
https://iniva.org/blog/2017/08/02/afrofuturism-and-the-preservation-of-the-black-body/
Brathwaite, E.K. (2021). Caribbean Man in Space and Time. Small Axe 25(3), 90-104. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/863462.
Brathwaite, E.K. (1996). Note(s) on Caribbean Cosmology.River City 16(2), 1-17.
Castro-Gómez, S. (2007).The Missing Chapter of Empire. Cultural Studies, 21, 428 - 448.
De Freitas, P. A. (1999). Disrupting the nation : gender transformations in the Trinidad Carnival, New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 73(1-2), 5-34. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/13822373-90002583
Delany, S.R. (1999). Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts & the Politics of the Paraliterary. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Derrida, J., & Prenowitz, E. (1995). Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Diacritics, 25(2), 9–63. https://doi.org/10.2307/46514
Eshun,K (2003), (The Otolith Group), CR: The New Centennial Review
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, White masks. New York: Grove.
Gipsom, G. (2019). Creating and Imagining Black Futures through Afrofuturism. In A. De Kosnik & K. P. Feldman (Eds.), #identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation (pp. 84–103). University of Michigan Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvndv9md.9
Glissant, E. (2008). Creolization in the Making of the Americas. Caribbean Quarterly, 54(1/2), 81–89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40655153
Glissant, Édouard, 1928-2011. (1997). Poetics of relation. Ann Arbor :University of Michigan Press
Hannerz, U. (1992). Cultural Complexity: Studies in the Social Organization of Meaning. New York, NY: Colombia University Press.
Hodapp, James (2022). “Fashioning Africanfuturism: African Comics, Afrofuturism, and Nnedi Okorafor’s Shuri.” Journal of graphic novels & comics 13.4 606–619. Web.
Lavender I. (2019). Afrofuturism rising : the literary prehistory of a movement. Ohio State University Press.
Liverpool, H. U. (1998). Origins of Rituals and Customs in the Trinidad Carnival: African or European? TDR (1988-), 42(3), 24–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146677
Martin, C. (1998). Trinidad Carnival Glossary. TDR (1988-), 42(3), 220–235. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146693
Mir, F. (2015). Introduction. The American Historical Review, 120(3), 844–851. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26577259
Nandy, Ashis. (1988). The intimate enemy : loss and recovery of self under colonialism. Delhi ; Oxford :Oxford University Press,
Nandy, Ashis. (1988). The intimate enemy : loss and recovery of self under colonialism. Delhi ; Oxford :Oxford University Press,
Nurse, Keith (1999) Globalization and Trinidad Carnival: Diaspora, Hybridity and Identity in Global Culture Cultural Studies, 13:4, 661-690, DOI: 10.1080/095023899335095
Pearse, A. (1956). Carnival in Nineteenth Century Trinidad. Caribbean Quarterly, 4(3/4), 175–193. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40652634
Price, R. (2017). Créolisation, Creolization, and Créolité. Small Axe 21(1), 211-219. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/651769.
Richards, Glen L., et al. Questioning Creole: Creolisation Discourses in Caribbean Culture, edited by Verene A. Shepherd, Ian Randle Publishers, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.libproxy.unl.edu/lib/unebraskalincoln-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5986651.
Riggio, M. C. (1998). Resistance and identity: Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. TDR [Cambridge, Mass.], 42(3), 6+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A21115041/AONE?u=anon~c8bb389f&sid=googleScholar&xid=f296980f
Riggio, M. C., Cupid, J., & Vieira, G. A. (1998). Geraldo Andrew Vieira: Making Mas: An Interview. TDR (1988-), 42(3), 194–202. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146690
Webb, J., del Pilar Kaladeen, M., & Tantam, W. (2020). Introduction. In J. Webb, M. del Pilar Kaladeen, W. Tantam, & R. Westmaas (Eds.), Memory, Migration and (De)Colonisation in the Caribbean and Beyond (pp. 1–18). University of London Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvwh8cwp.5
Zamalin, A. (2019). Black Utopia: The History of an Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism. Columbia University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/zama18740