Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements

by Walidah Imarisha

  Octavia’s Brood thank yous:

  John Jennings for a cover design that exceeded even our intergalactic dreams. Sheree Renée Thomas, who went above and beyond in her role as adviser, for her insight and guidance. All of the contributors for their commitment to this visionary process. AK Press and Charles and Zach, Chris Dodge for such an amazing copy-editing job! The Institute for Anarchist Studies and Lara and Paul Messersmith-Glavin and Cindy Milstein. Jordan Flaherty and Left Turn Magazine and everyone who contributed and supported the Visionary Fiction section of the magazine. Everyone doing Octavia Butler Emergent Strategy sessions/groups across the country. Max Rameau for the wonderful website. Mumia for writing and recording his essay. The Allied Media Conference for incubating this project, and continual support. Everyone who worked on Octavia Butler Strategic Reader and The Transformative Justice Reader. Tananarive Due for her mentorship. Steven Barnes, Kiese Laymon, Jen Angel, Jeff Chang. Camilo Mejia, Seth Mulliken, Richard Ejire, Sage Crump, Ronica Mukerjee, Ibrahim Abdul Matin, Wild Dandelions, Bryonn Bain, Bernard Collins. Ayana Jamieson, Moya Baily and the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network. Soraya Jean-Louis McElroy. Jonathan Cunningham and the Experience Music Project. Luzviminda Carpenter and Uzuri Productions. Invincible and Gabriel Teodros for donating music for our indiegogo campaign. Sham-e-ali for donating poetry to the indiegogo campaign. Copperwire for their visionary music partially born out of the Brood. Warsan Shire. Lynnee Denise. Jeff Perlstein and Solespace, Moon Palace Books, Ancestry Books, Wildseeds NOLA. Nisi Shawl, Samuel Delany, Nalo Hopkinson, NK Jemisin. ColorLines, Red Door Project, The Skanner, Racialicious, Hooded Utilitarian, Bitch Media. Carl Brandon Society for existing and their ongoing important work. South End Press. Everyone who supported the indiegogo campaign in any and every way, anyone who has attended an event.

  Oppressed people fighting for justice and liberation worldwide.

  To our ancestors, for dreaming us up and bending reality to create us. May we carry that legacy into the far future.

  Walidah’s thank yous:

  Mom, Kakamia Jahad Imarisha, Sundiata Acoli, David Gilbert, Bayla, Turiya, my god kids Elijah and EKela, Petey, John Joo, Kodey, Hasan Shakur (RIP), Ian Head, Leah Yacoub Halperin, TARDIS Collective past present and future members, Rivas and Alegre, Joseph Austin, Kiwi Illafonte, Daniel Hunter, Noah Prince, Khalil Edwards, Hasan Salaam, Fayemi, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Amara Perez, Stephan Herrera, Dan Berger, Claude Marks and the Freedom Archives, Kristian Williams, Larry Colton, Matthew Shenoda.

  adrienne’s thank yous:

  Jane, Jerry, April and Autumn Brown, Sam Conway, Finn, Siobhan, Mairead, Brad, Summer, Bran, and the rest of my family. Papa, Grandma Brown, the baby, Charity Hicks, David Blair and the rest of my ancestors. Lynnee Bonner. Kat Aaron, Grace Lee Boggs, Janine De Novais, Tananarive Due, dream hampton, Shea Howell, Shane Jones, Ife Kilimanjaro, Jenny Lee, Dani McClain, Mike Medow, Evans Richardson, Sofia Santana, Adriana and Diallo and Auset Shabazz, Sterling Toles, Jodie Tonita, Ill Weaver and all my beloveds. Allied Media Projects and Generative Somatics (Team B!), Denise Perry and BOLD and the movements that shaped and radicalized me. Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship and Knight Arts Challenge. Detroit—the people and the place.

  We also ran a crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds that would bring this book into the world. The supportive response overwhelmed us, more than doubling our goal. We think every single person who donated whether it was $1 or $1,000, is part of this collective dreaming process, and so we want to list everyone who shared their name with their contribution here:

  Aaron Brown, amber yada, Aleena Jack, Amanda Garces, Eva Agudelo, Oliver Hayes, Allyse Heartwell, Alice Eastman, Anushka Jagdeo, Alex Leclerc, Alison Abreu-Garcia, aly d., Arun Mathur, Amelia Cates, Amy McKie, Blaine Vogt, Anh Phan, andrea marcos, Anne Watanabe, Antoinette Poindexter, Annika Fagerlind, April Cunningham, Andy Allen, Deb Burgard, Abram S Himelstein, Ayana A. H. Jamieson, beth gutelius, Bethany Jacobs, Christopher Lee, Brian Frank, Cara Graninger, Casey Carmody, Caroline Picker, Carolyn Williams, Cayden Mak, C. Oberholtzer, Celia Alario, cesar maxit, Chani Geigle-Teller, Benjamin Chapman, Alicia Garza, Choya Adkison-Stevens, Christopher Leinonen, Christopher Hamann, Carmela Feigenbaum, Nicole Ricket, Courtney Martin, Silas Woodsmith, Damon Constantinides, Jonathan Urquhart, Daniel Stalter, Darby Hickey, Diana D. Duarte, Deborah Schwartz, didier deshommes, Diana Sands, Kenny Rose, Danielle, praveen sinha, Drew Herzig, Todd Graham, Nick Ackerley, Eie Irons, Elizabeth Franke, Elizabeth S. Q. Goodman, Ellen Shull, Deva Kyle, Erica McGillivray, Emily Croft, Emily Wong, Esperanza Tervalon-Daumont, Marlo J. DeMauro, fayemi shakur, Kate Bell, Fiona Ning Cheuk, Jonel Daphnis, J. K. Riviere, Gan Golan, Greg Buckland, Beth Boose, Cree Boyechko, Carol Squires, Dona Gomez, Geoffrey Blanchette, Gretjen Clausing, Greg Stromire, Jeff Gundy, Gillian Andrews, Guy Schaff, Heather Martin, Heidi Guenin, holly hessinger, Ian Rhodewalt, Davida ingram, jessica firsow, Kelley Meister, Irit Reinheimer, Maggie Block, Jon Berger, Laura Valentine, Kenyeda Adams, Jasmin Thana, Jazmin Smith, John O’Brian, jean Catherine steinberg, Jeanelle Wittcke, Jeanne Burns, eliana machuca, Jenn Welna, Jere Martin, Jeremy G. Kahn, Jess Daniel, Jessica Lee, Jesse Freeston, Jessica Rosenberg, karen blanco, John Lodder, Jody Rutherford, John Hardenbergh, John H. Joo, Jonah S Boyarin, Joshua C Burnett, Joshua Kahn Russell, Jeremy Weyl, Judy Hatcher, Julia Haverstock-Wagner, J. Nelson, Julian Rodriguez-Drix, Julia K. Perini, Kai Lynch, Emi Kane, Kari Koch, Kate Weck, Kirsten Anderson, Keara Purvis, Kelly Jennings, Ken Green, Katrina E Schaffer, K. L. Davis, KellyAnne Mifflin, Kristen Westfall, Kristie McKinley, Kay Shaw, Kyem Brown, Kimberly Murray, Rosana Cruz, Jocelyne Houghton, Adam Haley, Jennifer Armas, Laura Fletcher, Lauren Bacon, Lauren Ressler, Laurel Hoyt, Leland Baxter-Neal, Otts Bolisay, Lindsay Baltus, Liz Burgess, Liz Carlin, Elizabeth Fussell, Lily Cavanagh, Laurie Stevens, Julia Santo, Alexander Cotton, Jocelyn Burrell, Lars Ingebrigtsen, Lydia Ondrusek, Margot Weiss, Marie Choi, Martin Eve, Martyn Pepperell, Sine Hwang Jensen, Megan Obrien, Meghan McCarron, Melissa Getreu, Mary Ganster, michael erwin, Mary Gillmor-Kahn, Minal Hajratwala, Michael Eaves, MaPo Kinnord-Payton, Moira OKeeffe, Morgan Payne, Anjali Taneja, Moya Bailey, Maura Pavalow, mary miratrix, Kristine Maitland, Martha Wells Wilson, Monique Walton, Nick Murphy, Nadia Alexis, Naomi Sobel, Kathryn Wawer, Nicholas Javier, Nitika Raj, Nadia Mohamed, Jessica Lin, eric reece, Dani Jordan, Joe overton, Kenji Liu, Patti Powell, Patrick Evans, Bruce Poinsette, Soli Johnson, suzanna foretich, Rachel Miller, Maryse Mitchell-Brody, Josh Wilson, Rebecca Lundberg, Belia Saavedra, Rosa Squillacote, Aaron Rosenblum, Rossella De Leon, Roxanne Lawson, Roy Perez, Renee Perry, Asmara Ruth Afework, Ryan Li Dahlstrom, Sara Ryan, Sage Crump, Samirah Raheem, Sara Brodzinsky, Sarah Insel, Sean Parson, Myrna Morales, Katie Seitz, Lauren Smith, jeffrey severe, Sarah Grafman, Damon Siefert, Sienna Morris, Scott Macklin, Selamawit Misgano, Jean Carmichael, Manish Vaidya, Soya Jung, Julianne Gale, Marcus Tenaglia, Adam Purcell, Stu Marvel, Social Justice Fund, Suzanne Fischer, Christina Springer, Sami Wannell, Tamara Lynne, tash shatz, Kit Lorraine Stuber, Jenny Montoya Tansey, Djibril al-Ayad, Tom Andes, Tanuja Jagernauth, Tiffani, Anthony T. Teel, Todd Cooley, Amanda Torres, Tree Bressen, Jen-Mei Wu, Victoria Donnelly, Vicki Capalbo, Thomas Walker, Robert Karimi, Ashley Whitfield, William Chalmers, scott winn, Lynn Brown, Kristin Ming, shanti diane, Yashna Padamsee, Katherine Aaron, Yuki Kidokoro, Zachary Sandfield, Jordan, Zakaria Mohamed, Zefyr Scott, Zanetta BH.

  Bios

  Walidah Imarisha

  Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, educator, and spoken word artist. Author of the poetry book Scars/Stars (Drapetomedia Press), her nonfiction exploration of crime, prisons, and redemption will be published by AK Press and the IAS in 2016. She was also one of the editors of Another World Is Possible (Subway Press), the first 9/11 anthology. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip Hop, Letters from Young Activists, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, The Quotable Rebel, Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency, Joe Strummer: Punk
Rock Warlord, and Near Kin: A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler. One of the cofounders and first editor of political hip-hop publication AWOL Magazine, Walidah also helped found the Human Rights Coalition, a Pennsylvania organization led by prisoners’ families and former prisoners. Walidah directed the 2005 Katrina documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans. She has taught in Portland State University’s Black Studies Department and Oregon State University’s Women Gender Sexuality Studies Department.

  adrienne maree brown

  adrienne maree brown is a writer, science fiction scholar, love and pleasure activist, facilitator, healer, and doula living in Detroit. In 2014 she was part of the inaugural Speculative Fiction Workshop at Voices of Our Nation. In 2013 she was awarded the Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship, and received a Knight Arts Challenge Award to run a series of Octavia Butler–based science-fiction writing salons in Detroit (detroitscifigenerator.wordpress.com). Learning from her eighteen years of movement facilitation and participation, she approaches Butler’s work through the lens of emergent strategy: complexity born of simple interactions, aligned with nature, rooted in relationship, resilience, and embracing adaptability and change. adrienne has helped to launch a loose network that is growing Octavia Butler– and emergent strategy– related work with and for people interested in approaching speculative fiction from a social justice framework. adrienne centers emergent strategy in her facilitation work, and believes that changing how we create and strategize will change the way we exist. She is also on a teaching and healing path with Generative Somatics and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD). She documents her awe and learning at adriennemareebrown.net/blog.

  Contributors

  Alexis Pauline Gumbs

  Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, an Afro-Caribbean grandchild, a prayer-poet priestess, and a time-traveling space cadet who lives and loves in Durham, North Carolina. Alexis is the founder of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind local and intergalactic community school and a cofounder of the Mobile Homecoming Project, an experiential archive amplifying generations of queer black brilliance. Alexis was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton papers at Emory University while earning her PhD in English, African and African American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. And her mother is a Trekkie.

  Alixa Garcia

  Alixa Garcia is cofounder and artistic director of Climbing PoeTree, an internationally renowned activist, multimedia theater, and spoken-word duo out of Brooklyn, New York. She has facilitated workshops and performed in hundreds of venues, from Harvard University to New York City jails on Rikers Island. Garcia has presented alongside such powerhouses as Angela Davis, Alicia Keys, and Alice Walker. Her work has appeared in dozens of literary journals and magazines, including ArtForum and ColorLines. Her visual art has been featured on large-scale walls in New York City, Cuba, and Jamaica, as well as in galleries and museums, including the Smithsonian, and the African American Museum in Philadelphia. She was the recipient of the Global Arts Fund/Astrea Visual Artist Grant, 2013–14, and won the best director award at the Reel Sistah Film Festival, New York City, 2008, for Unnatural Disasters and a Great Shift in Universal Consciousness. Through multiple artistic media, this multidisciplinary artist is on a mission to overcome destruction with creativity.

  Autumn Brown

  Autumn Brown is a mother, community organizer, theologian, artist, and facilitator. She is the Interim Executive Director of RECLAIM! and serves on the board of directors of the Common Fire Foundation. She has facilitated organizational and strategic development with community-based and movement organizations and trained hundreds of community organizers in consensus process, facilitation, and resisting racism. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has also completed specialized study in theology at Oxford University and the General Theological Seminary of New York. She is a recipient of the 2009 Next Generation of Leadership Fellowship through the Center for Whole Communities and the 2010 Creative Community Leadership Institute Fellowship through Intermedia Arts. She currently lives in Avon, Minnesota, with her partner, children, dog, and wildlife.

  Bao Phi

  Bao Phi has been a performance poet since 1991. A two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, Bao Phi has appeared on HBO’s Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and a poem of his appeared in the 2006 Best American Poetry anthology. His first collection of poems, Sông | Sing, was published by Coffee House Press in 2011 to critical acclaim. He has been a City Pages and Star Tribune artist of the year.

  Dawolu Jabari Anderson

  Dawolu Jabari Anderson lives and works in Houston. He studied fine arts at Texas Southern University and the University of Houston and completed residencies at Lawndale Art Center in Houston, and Skowhegan School of Paint and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Selected solo exhibitions include Dawolu Jabari Anderson: Black Film, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and The Birth of a Nation—Yo! Bumrush the Show: Works by Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Arts League Houston. Selected group exhibitions include the Whitney Biennial 2006: Day for Night at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; System Error: Work is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, (2007), Palazzo delle Papesse, Siena, Italy; and Who Goliards? Artists at the Turn of the Century, (2004), University Museum, Texas Southern University.

  Dani McClain

  Dani McClain is a journalist living in Oakland, California. Her reporting and writing have been published in The Nation, ColorLines, Guernica, and Al Jazeera America.

  David F. Walker

  David F. Walker is an award-winning journalist, filmmaker, educator, comic book writer, and author. His publication BadAzz MoFo became internationally known as the indispensable resource guide to black films of the seventies, and he is coauthor of the book Reflections on Blaxploitation: Actors and Directors Speak (Scarecrow, 2009). His other work includes the young adult series The Adventures of Darius Logan, as well as comic book series Number 13 (Dark Horse Comics) and The Army of Dr. Moreau (Monkeybrain Comics).

  Gabriel Teodros

  To know that another world is possible and to bring it to life through music: this has always been the mission of emcee Gabriel Teodros. He first made a mark in the Pacific Northwest with the group Abyssinian Creole and reached an international audience with his critically acclaimed solo debut Lovework. He has since set stages on fire across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as in Ethiopia. The year 2012 saw two more acclaimed albums: the solo release Colored People’s Time Machine and CopperWire’s Earthbound, a hip-hop space opera set in the year 2089 that Teodros recorded with fellow Ethiopian-American artists Meklit Hadero and Burntface. In 2014 Teodros released Children of the Dragon with Washington DC–based producer AirMe, followed by Evidence of Things Not Seen with New Zealand–based producer SoulChef. For more information, see www.gabrielteodros.com.

  Kalamu ya Salaam

  New Orleans–based writer, filmmaker, and educator Kalamu ya Salaam is a senior staff member of Students at the Center, a writing program in the New Orleans public schools. Kalamu is the moderator of neo•griot, an information blog for black writers and supporters of our literature worldwide. Kalamu can be reached at kalamu@mac.com.

  Jelani Wilson

  Jelani Wilson lives and writes in Jersey with his kick-ass family. If he’s not voraciously reading, watching cartoons, or practicing rapper hands, he’s off somewhere training in jiu jitsu or subverting authority. He promises to start posting his fiction along with mercifully brief musings and sociopolitical commentary at pageswithoutpaper.com, but on the real we’ll believe it when we see it.

  Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

  Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer mixed Sri Lankan writer, performer, educator, and healer. The author of the Lambda Award-winning Love Cake and Consensual Gen
ocide, she is also the coeditor, with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities. She is the cofounder of Mangos With Chili, and a lead artist with Sins Invalid. She has organized around issues of transformative justice, disability justice, and radical teaching and learning for twenty years. Her next book of poetry, Bodymap, and memoir, Dirty River, are forthcoming. For more info, see www.brownstargirl.org.

  LeVar Burton

  LeVar Burton is an actor, presenter, director, producer, and author. He published his science fiction book Aftermath (Aspect Press) in 1997. Burton is best known for his roles as Kunta Kinte in the 1977 award-winning ABC television miniseries Roots and as Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge in Star Trek: The Next Generation. He was the host and executive producer of the long-running PBS children’s series Reading Rainbow, which ran for twenty-three years, garnering over two hundred broadcast awards, including a Peabody Award and twenty-six Emmy Awards. Burton and his company RRKIDZ re-imagined Reading Rainbow as an iPad app in 2012, which became the number one educational app within thirty-six hours of its debut. In 2014, Burton ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to bring Reading Rainbow back as a Web-based show with free access available for schools in need.

  Mia Mingus

  Mia Mingus is a community organizer, writer, and educator working for disability justice and prison abolition via transformative justice and community accountability. She identifies as a queer physically disabled Korean woman transracial and transnational adoptee. She works for community, interdependency, and a home for all of us, not just some of us, and longs for a world where disabled children can live free of violence, with dignity and love. As her work for liberation evolves and deepens, her roots remain firmly planted in ending sexual violence. She works locally to build and support responses to child sexual abuse that do not rely on the state (i.e., police, prisons, the criminal legal system) with the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective. Her writings can be found at leavingevidence.wordpress.com. This is her first foray into writing fiction.