A CONSTELLATION OF QUEER AFRO FUTURIST VISIONS
We have collaboratively collected this “reading list” to be enjoyed and expanded on.
People's names are before their works.
WRITINGS - BOOKS - POETRY - PAPERS
Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy
Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism
Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater
Alex Zamalin, Black Utopia: The History of An Idea from Black Nationalism to Afrofuturism
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, M Archive: After the End of The World
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Dub: Finding Ceremony
Amandla Stenberg, Niobe #1 & #2 She is Life
Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic
Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
Bell Hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love
Bell Hooks, It’s All About Love
Bernadine Evariste, Girl, Woman, Other
Eve Tuck & Yang, Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor
Fabulous: Sylvester James, Black Queer Afrofuturism and the Black Fantastic
Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons
Jared Sexton, Afro Pessimism: The Unclear World
Jared Sexton, The Social Life of Social Death: On Afro-Pessimism and Black Optimism
Jose Esteban Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity
Jose Esteban Munoz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics
Malik Gaines, Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible
Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads
Octavia Butler, Dawn (Xenogenesis #1)
Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Rasheedah Philips, Black Quantum Futurism Space-Time Collapse II, Community Futurisms
Rasheedah Philips, Black Quantum Futurism: Theory & Practice
Ruha Benjiman, Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code
Ruha Benjiman, Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life
Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals
Sylvia Wynter, On Being Human as Praxis
Yrsa Daley-Ward, Bone
Ytasha L Womack, Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy Culture
Academic, transnational feminisms:
El-Tayeb, Fatima. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.
Wekker, Gloria. White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race. Durham London: Duke University Press, 2016.
Alexander, M. Jacqui. Pedagogies of Crossing: Meditations on Feminism, Sexual Politics,
Memory, and the Sacred. Perverse Modernities. Durham [N.C.]: Duke University Press, 2005.
Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Expanded and rev. 3rd ed, Women of Color Series. Berkeley: Third Woman Press, 2002.
MUSIC / SONIC
3 Canal
Adrienne Marie Browne, How To Survive The End of The World (podcast)
Africa Bambaata
Afro-Harping Dorothy Ashby
Azelia Banks
Calypso Rose
DREXCIYA
Erykah Badu
Evan Ifekoya, Black Obsidian Sound Systems (Art/sound)
FAKA
FKA Twigs
Frank Ocean
George Clinton, Mothership Connection
Grace Jones
Janelle Monae
Lyzza
Marsha's Plate (podcast)
Missy Elliot
Moses Somney
Nina Simone
Onipa
Serpent With Feet
Shy Girl
Sudan Archives
Sun Ra
VISUALS / VIDEOS & ART
Fannie Sosa, Niv Acosta, Black Power Naps
Jenn Nkiru, Rebirth is Necessary,
Jenn Nkiru, Black To Techno
Jennie Livingston, Paris is Burning
Josell Ramos, Maestro The Birth of Dance Culture
John Akomfrah, The Last Angel of History 1996
Juliana Huxtable (artist)
Kodwo Eshun & The Otolith Group (artists)
Kara Walker (artist)
Rhea Dillon (art film)
Sharon Lewis, Brown Girl Begins
Sun Ra, Space is the place
SUPPORTS/LINKS & FURTHER INSIGHTS
Black Futures, Kimberly Drew & Jenna Worthem
Noname Bookclub
Liquid Blackness
Black Fusionist Society
https://afrofuturist.center/programming/digital_projects/black-fusionist-society
The Justice Fleet
https://www.thejusticefleet.com
Dweller Electronics Library on Techno & Its History
Black Techno Futures Local and Global Perspectives
https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=297032738298446&ref=watch_permalink
Mikrohaus or the Black Atlantic
https://vimeo.com/60528438?fbclid=IwAR2XfE7FypS0SioCvuHyfWki3sxg8_EjhS0yobuddB4mu1ClVI6P3LtL4aw
The Last Angel of History, John Akomfrah 1996
Ayeesha Hamid Black Atlantis
https://www.artandeducation.net/classroom/video/276250/ayesha-hameed-black-atlantis
Jamie Philbert, Art on Purpose & Kalinda
https://www.jamiephilbert.com/?fbclid=IwAR1reNAoi6GsUDqfgb7mRLF5e9XvNoA8m4zoLSS-4u6RuGzy2qTMp2Z0lhk
In Conversation: An Episode on Climate Justice and Queer & Trans Liberation
https://www.ourclimatevoices.org/listening-series/queer-trans-liberation
https://open.spotify.com/album/4M0QYlDP6vIlrPLEBTZOFz?highlight=spotify:track:4r0YHR3zvwXER5yrZuKDfP
Makeda Thomas
Idakeda Group & Atillah Springer
Sister from Another Planet
https://www.sisterfromanotherplanet.com/category/afrofuturistic/
The Digital and Black Hair, Nontsikkelelo Mutiti
http://nontsikelelomutiti.com/2017/03/04/the-digital-in-black-hair-aesthetics/
Black Hair as Technology
https://www.sisterfromanotherplanet.com/the-digital-black-hair-technology-african-material-culture/
The Funambulist Journal and Podcast
CONTRIBUTORS
BLACK QUEER BOOK CLUB
We offer a safe space for black queer people, queer POC and POC allies to read, learn, discuss, grow and create in a friendly supportive community. We are a group that seeks to reimagine what it would be like to center black queer stories and to learn from them. Our active social media at the moment is our Instagram: @black.queerbookclub.
PRIM.BLACK
K Bailey Obazee is the DRYBABE of our times. Founder of PRIM, a platform for storytelling which produces OKHA, a monthly queer + black book club, K believes in the power of storytelling, especially when shared full with Blackness.
The Institute of Queer Ecology (IQECO), is a collaborative, decentralized organism that works to imagine and realize an equitable multispecies future. With interdisciplinary programming that oscillates between curating exhibitions and directly producing artworks/projects, the Institute of Queer Ecology lays the groundwork for a (bio)diverse utopia.
Elizabeth Löwe Hunter
Is an academic and one of our video responders - watch here (permalink to queer afro futures video)
ORIGINS EILE
OE is a Queer Black collective for QTIBPOC based in Ireland.
PROPAGATION