Sci-Fi, the Surreal and an Afrofuture; or, How it came to be that "Real Life is the Fantasy I Choose to Imagine"

My stories have often been labelled "sic-fi." I've always found this amusing because I do not think they are science fiction at all and I've never actually been very interested in the genre (not to get into the confines of "genre" in this essay). My reticence to accept the label of science fiction is the science part of the term (those of you who balked at "genre" might be groaning about "label" but unlike the former which I have an aversion to, the latter I accept and permit people to cover me in). I could care less about creating a world with a different atmosphere and gravitational pull, I'm not overly concerned with why this planet turns, never mind do I attempt to conceive of a rotational force of an imagined planet in an imaginary universe.

However, I have personified insects and trees in my fiction. I am interested in the relationship between humans and their natural environment, particularly direct dealings between the two. How does the tree feel when a footpath is suddenly carved out right next to where it is rooted for the remainder of its days? How does the insect feel when its home is poison bombed and its either die or evacuate into the great unknown? I am not an absolute tree-hugger and bug lover; I do use this personification to playfully investigate the things humans do to each other. I am less interested in what motivates the oppressor than the attempt at survival, or the resistance of the oppressed.

My fiction puts a magnifying glass on issues so close up that the view is distorted, surreal. This is real, only the experience is queasy.

At least, that's my opinion.

I've been thinking about science fiction the past couple of days since my meeting with Christian Hawkey, the director of my MFA program and the faculty advisor on Raw Fiction this year. Together we're figuring out a curriculum. Or rather, I bring in half-hashed ideas and he adds his own and then I have to go home and articulate to myself why I don't want to focus on science fiction as a focal point for imagining new structures of freedom.

For one, I don't see the end point of all writing necessitating new structures of freedom. It's a nice idea, but it's not everyone's aesthetic. It's not mine that's for sure, my creative work grapples with the lives of the oppressed, insect tree and human, and does not result in happy endings or alternate utopias.

[A beat.]

I recently read my first Afrofuturist novel. "The Trial of Christopher Okigbo" by Ali A. Mazrui

Mazrui passed away in October. The news of his death on social media is how I came to discover his work. It is a shame when death is an introduction, perhaps. It can also be seen as a door opening to a new realm. For me that realm is Afrofuturism, perhaps not unlike what we call Magical Realism in Latin American literature. There is a quality of the fiction that is more surreal and less science. There is an opening between worlds and times that has a spiritual quality, not something that can be defined in the language of physics chemistry or mathematics. The present is the past is the future, the spectrum isn't linear. That is my reality.

The novel itself reads like a fast-paced detective story (not a "genre" I'm very familiar with but I think it gets the simile across) but in fact it is a deeply philosophical work. It is a contemplation on reality, religion, existence and politics in the framework of a plot-driven novel with strong characters, complex relationships, true love, high-art sex, and mob violence with heinous murders that felt honest, not gratuitous. When I realized I was only 10-pages away from the end I thought it would all come too quickly but in fact the last ten-pages worked effectively to leave me feeling satisfied, though not sheltered from the cruelty of reality, and with a better understanding of the world in which I exist. "The Trial of Christopher Okigbo" also concerned itself with survival and that is what resonated in the last few paragraphs. Survival after trauma. That is Africa. That is reality.

So while I understand the importance of science fiction as a space for imagining a better reality, a better future, as an escape for those young people who are completely ostracized by the reality in which they must live every day, I am not so drawn to it on a personal level. In literature, I am interested in the investigation of the immediate politics of the day and how the imagination can be used to simultaneously distort and reveal how that machinery effects the individual, and how absurd it all really is. It is in my conscious actions (for I do not see my relationship to reading or writing as entirely conscious) where I strive to etch out something a bit more hopeful than the norm, and that is where Raw Fiction comes into play. That is why I can say, real life is the fantasy I choose to imagine.

WWOC: The Women Writers of Color Who Inspire Me (for Mahogany Browne)

I was introduced to the work of novelist and activist Edwidge Danticat when I was about 15 years old. I'll never forget the first story in Krik? Krak! It documents the correspondence between a young refugee on a boat who writes to his girlfriend in Haiti, and her letters to him that document the atrocities of the Duvalier regime. They write, even if there is no place to send the letters. They write with the hope that one day there will be a place to send the letters to and from. The story does not end with a note of hope and for that reason it was the first thing I sought out after reading Baldwin's "Going to Meet the Man." Paralyzed by all the emotion and horror wedged inside me, I reached for "Children of the Sea" and cried myself to sleep.

Based on my scenario, one role of the woman writer is to document that which is real and dreadful in a way that releases the pent up emotion. And once that emotion is released, we walk forward stronger, more mindful.

Over 15 years later, Danticat remains one of my most cherished inspirations. Her fiction pulls you right into the lives of complex characters who live under the dictatorships of Trujillo and Duvalier, or in the United States, often degraded immigrants - not to simplify their worlds into a couple of words but to offer the vast complexity of the Haitian situation. Danticat is more than a conscious writer who provokes a sense of empathy in her reader and shines light on a history of oppression, she is an advocate for her people.

As the director of a youth literary arts project that promotes social engagement and grassroots action for stronger communities, I often turn to Danticat for reference. In her 2010 collection of essay-memoir, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work, she reflects on historical and contemporary issues that have shaped her and the world she lives in. She is a successful writer, a household name, who will never forget where she comes from and all the work that there is to do.

Danticat says: “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

There is bravery in women warriors, writers, storytellers, truth tellers.

A couple of years ago I was wandering through the stacks of Housing Works Bookstore. My Life as a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani is the memoir of a woman who shares my first name and was born the year before I was, who was made to disappear in Iran as a 20-year-old college student. Taken to Evin prison. It is an account of torture and the complexities of dictatorships and the whim of those with power. A whim that spared her life, and she left and she spoke out.

As an educator, I feel the presence of the women who have come before me. I am inspired by the necessity of sharing women's stories from the perspective of women writers.

To teach I call on Bessie Head, Botswana's South African woman of prose. I call Arundhati Roy, if you don’t know, go know, that’s Arundhati Roy. I call Leslie Marmon Silko of the Lacona nation. I call Isabel Allende, who taught me the talents of the women's sex and horrors of men's politics before I was old enough to know that the world is full of mass graves. I call on Toni Morrison.

I recently listened to a speech by Michelle Alexander on 'Race and Caste in America' she calls for an end to mass incarceration, reparations for the war on drugs, and rehabilitation instead of punishment. She spoke of truth, of being able to see the truth in a system that hasn't changed since Jim Crow: we just use different words now. As an educator, I look to the bravery and wisdom of women warrior writers to inform my worldview.

And to inform my lifestyle. The Bengali writer and activist Mahasweta Devi (whose stories are translated by the postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak) was not a simple voyeur into the lives of tribals, she cast off her middle class lifestyle and went to live in the mountains with the people most oppressed in India and from that vantage point she shared their stories. I quote from the description on the back of Imaginary Maps: "Whether she is writing about ecological catastrophe, the connections between local elites and international capitalism, gender and resistance, or tribal agony, . . . Devi always links the specific fate of tribals in India to that of marginalized peoples everywhere."

This is a message shared with the resistance against police brutality in Ferguson, MO. It is not an isolated issue. The murder of Mike Brown is connected to the oppression of black men across the country and the history that made it possible. His murder is connected to the capitalist system in the United States, a country built on slavery, a country stolen in righteous annihilation of the indigenous people living on the land, a country that continues a Big Stick policy not just in Latin America and the Caribbean but across the globe. And we see women resisting men's wars. A line of women in Oakland, on Friday, November 28, chained themselves to the Bart Transportation and stopped the trains for over an hour. On the ground in Ferguson young women comprise many bodies on the front lines of the resistance.

There is my inspiration.

But it is equally important to remember the women that have touched my life directly. The women that helped me figure out what Raw Fiction is all about.

Spring 2012: I was taking a course in postcolonial literature at Hunter College as a non matriculated grad student, trying to figure out my life and planning Raw Fiction as a one-off project. My professor, Sonali Perera, author of "No Country: Working Class Writing in the Age of Globalization," impressed and inspired me to no end with her meticulously developed coursework and postcolonial passion. And then there is Tanisha Christie, director of "Walk With Me" a documentary that highlights three women-artist-activists, who heard about Raw Fiction and held on to me and put up with me and pointed me in the right direction time and time again.

So while there are so many great women writers and activists who I have mentioned as inspiration and models, those that touch our lives directly are the ones we can't live without.

And Mahogany Browne, my classmate, a new friend and necessary inspiration. Thank you for your work and your writing.