Black and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fiction

LITERARY EXPLORATIONS INTO THE RADICAL, HOPEFUL RACIAL FUTURES IMAGINED BY SCIENCE FICTION Essays by Marleen S. Barr, Gerry Canavan, Grace L. Dillon, M. Elizabeth Ginway, Matthew Goodwin, Edward James, De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Malisa Kurtz, Robin Anne Reid, Lysa M. Rivera, Patrick B. Sharp, and Lisa Yaszek Black and Brown Planets embarks on a timely exploration of the American obsession with color in its look at the sometimes contrary intersections of politics and race in science fiction. The contributors, including De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Edward James, Lisa Yaszek, and Marleen S. Barr, among others, explore science fiction worlds of possibility (literature, television, and film), lifting blacks, Latin Americans, and indigenous peoples out from the background of this historically white genre. This collection considers the role of race and ethnicity in our visions of the future. The first section emphasizes the political elements of black identity portrayed in science fiction from black America to the vast reaches of interstellar space. In the next section, analysis of indigenous science fiction addresses the effects of colonization, helps discard the emotional and psychological baggage carried from its impact, and recovers ancestral traditions in order to adapt in a post-Native-apocalyptic world. Likewise, this section explores the affinity between science fiction and subjectivity in Latin American cultures from the role of science and industrialization to the effects of being in and moving between two cultures. By infusing more color into this otherwise monochrome genre, Black and Brown Planets imagines alternate racial galaxies in which people of color determine human destiny. Isiah Lavender III, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is an assistant professor of English at Louisiana State University. He is the author of Race in American Science Fiction.

Author: Isiah Lavender III
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 10/01/2014
Pages: 250
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.22lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.75d
ISBN: 9781628461237


Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2015 pg. 1128

About the Author
Isiah Lavender III is Sterling Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia. He is author of Race in American Science Fiction and Afrofuturism Rising: The Literary Prehistory of a Movement; editor of Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction, published by University Press of Mississippi; and coeditor of Literary Afrofuturism in the Twenty-First Century. He also edits for Extrapolation, the oldest science fiction journal.