7 Black Women Science Fiction Writers Everyone Should Know

[james_davis_nicoll]

Though Black women's literature spans every genre imaginable though the visibility of Black women in speculative fiction is often low. These women create work that not only speaks to their experiences but imagines new worlds and possibilities. Their stories take us on journeys. And while though the work may offer temporary moments of escape, when we return we're better able to interpret our own place in the world. If you're interested in taking the trip, you'll want to check out these Black women science fiction writers.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Thank you, I didn't know all of those. Also, I didn't know that website.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Capitalizing "Black:" I don't do it. Should I?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

For complicated reasons, today I reread Samuel R. Delany's essay "Racism in Science Fiction," which everyone is always telling each other to read.

Following a mention of the phrase "black artist," I found this parenthetical thought:

(and you’ll forgive me if I stick to the nomenclature of my young manhood, that my friends and contemporaries, appropriating it from Dr. Du Bois, fought to set in place, breaking into libraries through the summer of ’68 and taking down the signs saying Negro Literature and replacing them with signs saying “black literature”—the small “b” on “black” is a very significant letter, an attempt to ironize and de-transcendentalize the whole concept of race, to render it provisional and contingent, a significance that many young people today, white and black, who lackadaisically capitalize it, have lost track of)...

I hadn't realized the lowercase "b" was fraught with historical significance. Newly-aware, I will continue my practice.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

... I think James may have put an additional "Though" at the start of the sentence?

--Dave

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I know three of them! At least in the sense of ``have read'', not in the sense of ``could participate in a substantial discussion of their writing''.