Across an array of mediums, genres, and aesthetics, Black speculative art inspires radical re-imaginings of the past and revolutionary visions for the future.
Read, listen and watch and explore more with these recommendations from the Center for Science and the Imagination and our visiting scholars.
Fiction
Tomi Adeyemi, Children of Blood and Bone
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Friday Black
Octavia Butler, Wild Seed
Charles Chestnutt, The Goophered Grapevine
Phenderson Djèlí Clark, The Black God’s Drums
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer
Martin R. Delany, Blake; or The Huts of America
W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Comet”
Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, M Archive
Frances Harper, Iola Leroy
N.K. Jemisin, The Broken Earth Trilogy
Victor LaValle, The Ballad of Black Tom
Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo
Gloria Naylor, Mama Day
Nnedi Okorafor, Who Fears Death
Suyi Davies Okungbowa, David Mogo, Godhunter
Deji Bryce Olukotun, After the Flare
Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo
Charles Saunders, Imaro
Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts
Sheree Renée Thomas, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora
Film & T.V.
Electric Dreams, episode “Kill All Others”
Love, Death, and Robots, episode “Zima Blue”
An Oversimplification of Her Beauty
Music
Troy L. Wiggins’ Afrofuturist Playlist
Scholarship
Reynaldo Anderson, Afrofuturism 2.0
Michael G. Bennett, Afrofuturism
Kodwo Eshun, Further Considerations on Afrofuturism
Adilifu Nama, Super Black https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/namsue
Nisi Shawl, A Crash Course on the History of Black Science Fiction
Ytasha L. Womack, Afrofuturism