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By Charles Rammelkamp
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Though the term was coined in 1993 by Mark Dery, Afrofuturism is the quintessential Twenty-first Century aesthetic philosophy, exploring the African-American experience via comic book superheroes, speculative fiction, fantasy, magic realism and the like to embrace a vision. Ytasha L. Womack author of Afrofuturism defines it as, “An intersection of imagination, technology, the future and liberation.” Subtitled Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, this comprehensive anthology, The Future of Black, showcases some of the most eloquent and emblematic examples of the genre, with more than five dozen poets included, not to mention the gorgeous illustrations throughout that accompany the poetry.
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The Future of Black is organized into ten separate thematic groups, beginning with Man of Steel, poems addressed to that original comic book superhero, Superman, and including such categories as Black Superheroes and Black Antiheroes, Black Pop Culture and Black History before moving on to more speculative categories such as Video Games & Fantasy, New Origins and New Faith Constructs.
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That the survey begins with Superman is at once obvious and brilliant, the starting point for all the superheroes and cosmic beings that follow, and no less a superhero poet than Lucille Clifton is the initial voice. Her four short poems undercut the notion of the ultimate efficacy of a “superhero/savior.”
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Clifton’s titles include “if i should,” “further note to clark,” “final note to clark” and “note passed to superman.” Riffs on this follow: “new note to clark kent” by Frank X Walker and additional Superman poems by teri elam, Ashley M. Jones and Cynthia Manick, one of the editors of this anthology.
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Clifton’s poems, first published in her 1992 collection, The Book of Light, before the term “Afrofuturism” had even been invented, set the tone of alienation and skepticism that follows. In “further note to clark” she writes:
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the question for you is
what have you ever traveled toward
more than your own safety?
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She expands on this in “final note to clark”:
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what did i expect? what
did i hope for? we are who we are,
two faithful readers,
not wonder woman and not superman
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Finally, in “note passed to superman”:
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you can trust me,
there is no planet stranger
than the one I’m from.
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The More Superheroes section that follows includes a poem by another anthology editor. Gary Jackson’s “Nightcrawler Buys a Woman a Drink” is in the voice of that Black superhero in the Marvel group (“You’re staring, jaw-dropped at my tail. And yes, / it’s a good twenty inches long and moves / like a serpent in heat. Touch it. I’m no devil, honey….”). A. Van Jordan (“The Flash Reverses Time”) and Keith S. Wilson (“Aubade on Bachelorhood and Never Becoming the Flash”) likewise riff on The Flash, one of the famous DC Comics heroes.
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Black Superheroes includes poems about DC’s Static (Steven Leyva’s “Ode to Static”), Marvel’s Storm (Tara Betts’ “Storm Writes to Black Panther”), Marvel’s Blade (Amanda Johnston’s “Blade Speaks at Career Day” – Basically, I’m an exterminator and I love my job; Tim Seibles’ “Blade, the Daywalker,” “Blade, Historical” and “Blade, Unplugged”), and Marvel’s Luke Cage, aka, Power Man (Cynthia Manick’s “Praise for Luke Cage’s Skin and Starshine” and Gary Jackson’s “Luke Cage Tells It Like It Is”). Derrick Weston Brown’s hilarious “Bruuuuuh or When Brothers Debate Black Panther in a Safeway Parking Lot,” a found poem, relates a conversation about the Marvel Superhero and the football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins.
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In the dualistic universe of comic books, what is a superhero without a supervillain, right? The Black Antiheroes section kicks off with Sheree Reneé Thomas’ “Eartha Kitt Reflects on Cat Woman”:
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Some man always wanted to lay me down
but he never stayed to pick me up again
So I learned to make fear my friend
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Len Lawson’s “The Amanda Waller Suite” is composed of four “episodes” about the complex DC Comics political figure (aka, The Wall): “She Condoleezas her way / through the Pentagon / with the stealth of a panther.” Lawson is the third of the editors of The Future of Black. Cortney Lamar Charleston’s “Elegy for Killmonger with My Own Pain entering the Frame” takes on yet another Marvel supervillain, memorably played by Michael B. Jordan.
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While characters from the comic book world continue to appear in the poetry, the political implications seem to become more overt as we get into Black Pop Culture and beyond. Colin Kaepernick shows up, for instance, in a poem by Derrick Weston Brown, and Martin Luther King appears in Tara Betts’ poem to the Star Trek character, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura as well as in Qunicy Scott Jones’s “‘post-racial’ as Samuel L. Jackson.” Black History brings in Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, James Brown, the early anti-segregationist Octavius V. Catto, Emmett Till, LeBron James. Morian S. Webster’s “Harlem [3]” begins:
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The unfortunate news
for Langston Hughes
is that Harlem feels less like jazz
and more like the blues
This gentrified hood
being drained of its color
is like going home
and finding someone has replaced your mother
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It’s a small step from superheroes to religious mythology, and the New Faith Constructs section includes such titles as “Black Jesus” (Richard Garcia), “Creation Myth” (Bianca X), “As It Is in Heaven” (Craig Stevens), and in Black Women Narratives, “Goddess of Anger” (Teri Ellen Cross Davis), “Mitochondrial Eve” (Tim Fab-Eme), “La Diablesse” (Terese Mason Pierre).
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Les James’ “Why Black Women Write Horror Stories: A not-quite-fictional survey of Black female horror writers in the US,” prefaced by a confession that she uses Afrofuturism to process trauma as a horror writer, explains:
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Black women write scary stories
because: US history should be told as a scary story
because: Slavery was a living nightmare
because: Generations of Black people survived mass
kidnapping, physical and psychological torture, rape and
murder, and systematic dehumanization
because: Look at where we find ourselves today
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Black women write scary stories
because: Black people still fear for their lives
because: White people are still afraid of their own shadows
because: Most folks refuse to actually look in the mirror
because: They want good and evil to be black and white
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Terrance Hayes, Nikki Giovanni, former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, and Gil Scott-Herron are other notable poets whose work appears in this all-inclusive anthology.
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While I’ve mentioned the breathtaking full-color illustrations that accompany the poems in this book, they really do merit a spotlight of their own. John Jennings, Yorli Huff, Wolly McNair, Najee Dorsey, Karo Duro, Cagen Luse, Kevin Johnson and others are the artists of the over two dozen sexy, supernatural, at times downright scary graphic images that complete this astounding collection.
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The Future of Black is a truly impressive anthology that amplifies the idea of Afrofuturism and indeed the Black experience in America.
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You can find the book here: The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry
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Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for Brick House Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. His most recent releases are Sparring Partners from Mooonstone Press, Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books and Catastroika from Apprentice House.
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