Dark Matter is one of the
primary collections of short stories espousing the black science fiction
literary aesthetics. It personally has some of the most significant eye-opening
pieces for me to the possibilities
regarding the black imagination, even already being very familiar with the material
within the futurism and fantasy genres overall.
Edited by Sharee R. Thomas, this book
blends new (at the time, 2000s era) and older and some even classic
foundational stories together, as well as some thorough essays on Afrofuturism
at the end, by writers and cultural analysts.
I‘ll leave the whole book for the experience
of the readers, and in condensed form, go over my favorites.
Firstly in regards to the newest: Jewelle Gomez’s “Chicago 1927” was an amazing
blend of afro-historical fantasy, slave narrative, and vampire lore; my awe of
the story was more-so because I never read a black narrative mixed in with the vampire or supernatural genre like that before at the time, so that has to be
factored in. Particularly, the context of Gilda being alive long enough to have
lived through a time of direct slavery into post-slavery in the Harlem
Renaissance timeline was fascinating.
“Separation Anxiety” (Evie Shokley) Another well-established one mixing
many of my favorite subjects: arts, dance, historical context, and social/cultural
divisions. The story primarily revolves around Peaches and her brother Roo
(short for Roosovelt) and friend Trevette, living out artistic lifestyles in a neo-ghetto
of the 22nd century.
Linda Addison’s “Twice, At Once,
Separated” mixes South American rain forest society within an afro-futuristic
plot, and for a story not that long it frames a lot and gets a lot done by the
end. The ‘Ship’ there on kind of represents ‘god’, and an interconnection of
lucid dreaming, astral travel and technology, as well as holding DNA and
memories from a dying earth (though never directly said, they did allude to
being on a path most likely for a new home).
Nisi Shawl’s “At The Huts of Ajala” is
mostly enjoyed, but only off a bit because there are some things, mainly those
in parenthesis that come off as nonsensical, throwing off the flow of
narrative. This is definitely a story to reread though based on the need to decode
some of the content; even while reading I figured some obfuscating parts will
make sense on the second-go-round. Specifically, the ‘eternal spiral up’ and the
Before-Birth searching for ‘Two Heads’ to describe/be an explanation for
Loanna’s second sight. Other than that, it gave off some of the best visions
I’ve read in this genre.
“The Pretended” by Darryl A Smith is an elaborately painted story – good for the
amount of information you get out of it, always a lot to ‘decode’, definitely
the first pages because I didn’t know what was happening until later. Once the
general concept of this story was gotten – black peoples minds, languages, etc
uploaded into robots databases – I felt at ease as things started to or finally
fully made sense, at least the overall concept. Definite props to all the
original terminology, which was so much it seemed too much for just a short, like “Afridyne”. Also, within this once
you decode it you can see broader
world-build and a hella’va history in this future-based story, one projecting
that black people are no longer around, and that whites had actually created
these robots to replace the presence
of them.
Ama Patterson’s “Hussy Strutt”: although
many characters were done very well to have identifiable traits – especially Dream
and Zinger, one for being an intelligent-oracle but having frantic-random
rants, and the other for speaking out-loud storytelling to distract herself to
get through this plot – to me some characters were not needed.
Once you get attuned to history explained
in the Italic flashbacks, definitely like the four aunts –Chloe, Zora, Alice,
Gwen – as adult-basis/foundation of who looking over these kids and how they
got in the position of being locked in a basement.
An issue did come with the writer sort of
glossing over of very important structuring detail – and I know, short story
and all but – regarding all the natural disasters and economic collapse, this is never given too much structure
of how current society in that future-based story, after all that, is still
‘functioning’ to some degree. We are
given enough location basis in the northeast, but… the only thing that I can
conclude is that these ‘disasters’ had
recently happened, and people are still getting along in a sort of go
along-get along kind of way, but I can’t say as there isn’t enough information
to maintain the structure of the world and timeline we’re given. Still a good
read overall though.
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