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- Title
Race and Sexuality in Nalo Hopkinson’s Oeuvre; or, Queer Afrofuturism.
- Authors
Faucheux, Amandine H.
- Abstract
This essay argues for an intersectional approach to Afrofuturism, a genre defined by Mark Dery as “speculative fiction that treats African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture—and, more generally African American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future” (“Black to the Future” 180). Joining together black queer theory and afrofuturist theory, I introduce the concept of queer Afrofuturism, a term designating Afrofuturist texts in which race is inextricably tied to gender and sexuality so that it is impossible to talk about one without always already signifying the other. In a second part of the essay, I use queer Afrofuturism as a theoretical framework and analyze Nalo Hopkinson’s novels The Chaos (2012), The Salt Roads (2003), and her short story “A Habit of Waste” (2001). I argue that Hopkinson’s work is a particularly striking example of queer Afrofuturism because she uses intersectional characters with complex identities and genre-bending tropes to challenge rigid notions about identity, the body, and relationships.
- Subjects
HOPKINSON, Nalo, 1960-; TECHNO culture; RACE in literature; DERY, Mark; AFRICAN Americans in literature
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 2017, Vol 44, Issue 3, p563
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5621/sciefictstud.44.3.0563