“Afrofuturism is me, us, as Black people, seeing ourselves in the future. Being as magical as we want to be … We get to paint a different world, on our own terms. I get to be whatever I want to be through Afrofuturism.”
Janelle Monae
It’s always a valuable exercise to take stock of who you are
outside of the hot buzzwords of the day. I was asked recently to sum up my
faith without using any Christian jargon. I said that what I believe in is “a
living hope.” The idea of that being the core of my belief weighed on me
because of how profoundly it resonated with me. The more I thought about it,
the more I realized that idea undergirds who I am not only as a person of faith
but as a community organizer and as a writer.
Afrofuturism. Africanfuturism. Caribbean Futurism. Afritopia.
No matter what it’s called, it’s the intersection of the black
cultural lens with art, technology, and liberation. It’s the African diaspora
creating a framework to critique the past and dream of possible futures. As a
bridge connecting the past to the future, Afrofuturism embraces the concept of
Sankofa, a word in the Twi language (Ghana) that means “go back and get it” or
“it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.”
As a part of my community organizing work, I host a monthly
conversation called “Afrofuture Fridays” where we use Afrofuturist art to carve
out room to dream about where we want to be as a community. It’s what black
artists—black people, period—have always done, long before the term Afrofuturism
was coined in 1994. Our art ponders the questions “Where are we now?” “Where do
we want to be?” and “How do we get there?” It’s rooted in black people
imagining a better future for ourselves, on our terms, as we design blueprints
to find new ways to not only understand ourselves but the world around us.
“We need images of tomorrow and our people need them more than most.”
Samuel Delany
Which brings me to this issue of Apex Magazine. I could call it our Afrofuturist issue, but I think of it as an identity issue. The stories build awareness and raise consciousness, as identity stories do, as we explore who we are. They begin with a journey of self-discovery (like in Suyi Davies Okungbowa’s “Dune Song”) and the importance of defining ourselves (as Troy L. Wiggins addresses in “Let’s Talk About Afrofuturism”). Sometimes it’s simply about our right to be and live (as in LaShawn M. Wanak’s “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good”).
The stories allow space for conversations about race, our
humanity, and the insidious nature of oppression that people often don’t know
how to have. Be it critiquing the politics of today (in Tananarive Due and
Steven Barnes’ “Fugue State”) or in mapping possible ways for us to move
forward as a people (like Tobias S. Buckell’s “N-Coin”).
Most importantly, we dream. Together (thus Wole Talabi’s “When We
Dream We Are Our God”).
“Sometimes it’s an act of resistance just to portray ourselves with a future.”
Tananarive Due
In doing community organizing, in any struggle to break apart
systemic baggage, no matter where you find yourself or how you do it, what
you’re up against can loom so large, the battle can seem hopeless. There are
many dark nights of the soul, when you lay awake wondering “what’s the point?”
and are tempted to give up. The only thing that keeps you going is a living
hope. A radial (re-)imagining. Daring to dream of a better future, which is the
first act of resistance. Our audacity.
There is more to life than just survival. Part of what it means to
truly live is to have something to believe in. On the last day of Kwanzaa, the
principle we celebrate is Imani, which means faith. It means to believe with
all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the
righteousness and victory of our struggle. It, too, points to a living hope
that informs and infuses us. Sometimes life is about imagining the
possibilities of what could be. Believing in the promise of things that could
be. Just as part of recognizing our humanity is realizing that we deserve to
simply … be. No matter what that looks like. We deserve to live. And we deserve
to dream.
