Morrigan Phillips
Morrigan Phillips is an organizer, writer, Hufflepuff, and social worker living in Boston. Over the years, she has been a campaign and direct action organizer to thwart the forces of globalization. She currently works in the HIV/AIDS community in Boston, building networks of peer support and community-based programs to combat rising rates of infection. As a part of the Beautiful Trouble trainers network, Morrigan gets out and about doing direct action training. She is particularly enamored with creating and facilitating trainings that merge the power of imagined worlds with time-honored direct action training tools to find new and exacting avenues for radical change in the realms of climate justice, health access, public transportation, and more.
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist who chronicles the human condition. He was a resident of Pennsylvania’s death row for twenty-nine years and is currently incarcerated at SCI Mahoney. Written from his solitary confinement cell, his essays have reached a worldwide audience. His books Live from Death Row, Death Blossoms: Reflections From a Prisoner of Conscience, All Things Censored, Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the Spiritual Life of African and African-American People, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party, Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A, and The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America (with scholar Marc Lamont Hill) have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and been translated into nine languages. Mumia Abu-Jamal was in his youth a Trekkie and has read and loved sci-fi from Asimov to Herbert and Butler to Bisson. Forthcoming: Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Sheree Renée Thomas
Sheree Renée Thomas writes in Tennessee between a river and a pyramid. She is the author of Shotgun Lullabies: Stories & Poems (Aqueduct Press) and editor of Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction From the African Diaspora and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, winners of the 2001 and 2005 World Fantasy Awards, respectively. A Clarion West ’99 grad, Sheree has served as a juror of the Speculative Fiction Foundation, the Carl Brandon Society, and the Tiptree Awards. Her own writing received honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (16th and 17th eds.) and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and two Rhysling Awards. Read her work in Eleven, Eleven; Strange Horizons; Mythic Delirium; storySouth; Callaloo; Meridians; Obsidian; Harpur Palate; The Moment of Change: Feminist Speculative Poetry; 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin; Mojo: Conjure Stories; Hurricane Blues; Bum Rush the Page; The Ringing Ear; Mythic 2; and So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Tananarive Due
Tananarive Due is the former Cosby Chair in the Humanities at Spelman College. She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles. The American Book Award winner and NAACP Image Award recipient is the author of twelve novels and a civil rights memoir. She recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and in 2008 she won the Carl Brandon Society Kindred Award. Due and her husband/collaborator Steven Barnes wrote and coproduced a short film, Danger Word, based on their novel Devil’s Wake, which was nominated for best short narrative film at the Pan African Film Festival and BronzeLens Film Festival. A leading voice in Black speculative fiction, Due’s first short story collection, Ghost Summer and Other Stories, will be published in the summer of 2015 by Prime Books. She lives in Southern California with Steven Barnes and their son Jason.
Tara Betts
Tara Betts is the author of Arc & Hue and the libretto/chapbook THE GREATEST! A Tribute to Muhammad Ali. Tara earned her PhD in English and creative writing at SUNY Binghamton University. Her poems appear in Near Kin: A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler and several other anthologies. Her writings have appeared in Black Scholar, Essence, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, Callaloo, Xavier Review, Mosaic magazine, and Sounding Out!, a journal in sound studies. For more info: www.tarabetts.net.
Terry Bisson
Terry Bisson is a science fiction writer who lives in Oakland. He has also written biographies of Nat Turner and Mumia Abu-Jamal. His latest novel, Any Day Now (Overlook Press, 2012) is an alternate history of 1968.
Tunde Olaniran
Tunde Olaniran is a community-focused entertainer and educator specializing in the areas of gender, sexual equality, and sexual health and awareness. A long-time community activist and recording artist based in Flint, Michigan, he excels in merging arts programming and events with social issues–based learning workshops as a way to present new ideas and viewpoints to a diverse audience. He holds a master’s degree in nonprofit administration from the University of Michigan-Flint and is the manager of outreach for Planned Parenthood Mid and South Michigan.
Vagabond
Born in Brooklyn to a Jamaican father and Puerto Rican mother, Vagabond’s interest in art led him to become an artist, writer, and filmmaker. He studied fine and commercial art at a specialized high school in New York City and went on to study film at the School of Visual Arts. He dropped out of school to work with Spike Lee on Do The Right Thing and has worked in the film industry since then. He’s worked in the Puerto Rican independence movement since 1997 and has organized rallies, protests, and marches and created murals, pamphlets, and agitprop with the artist collective he helped found, the RICANSTRUCTION Netwerk. His work has been featured in Blu Magazine, AWOL, SALVO, Centro, Left Turn, and Liberator Magazine. His first feature film Machetero is about the ongoing struggle for Puerto Rican independence and has won awards in South Africa, Wales, England, Thailand, Ireland, and New York.
• • •
Institute for Anarchist Studies
The Institute for Anarchist Studies (IAS), a nonprofit foundation established in 1996, aims to support the development of anarchism by creating spaces for independent, politically engaged scholarship that explores social domination and reconstructive visions of a free society. All IAS projects strive to encourage public intellectuals and collective self-reflection within revolutionary and/or movement contexts. To this end, the IAS awards grants twice a year to radical writers and translators worldwide and has funded nearly a hundred projects over the years by authors from numerous countries, including Argentina, Lebanon, Canada, Chile, Ireland, Nigeria, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. It also publishes the journal Perspectives on Anarchist Theory and the Lexicon pamphlet series, organizes anarchist theory tracks and other events, offers the Mutual Aid Speakers List, and collaborates with AK Press on a book series. The IAS is part of a larger movement seeking to create a nonhierarchical society. It is internally democratic and works in solidarity with people around the globe who share its values. The IAS is completely supported by donations from anarchists and other anti-authoritarians—like you—and their projects, with any contributions exclusively funding grants and paying IAS operating expenses. For more information or to contribute to the work of the IAS, see www.anarchist-studies.org.
AK Press
AK Press is a worker-run collective that publishes and distributes radical books, visual and audio media, and other material. We’re small: a dozen people who work long hours for short money because we believe in what we do. We’re anarchists, which is reflected both in the books we provide and the way we organize our business. Decisions at AK Press are made collectively, from what we publish to what we distribute to how we structure our labor. All the work, from sweeping floors to answering phones, is shared. When the telemarketers call and ask who’s in charge, the answer is: everyone. Our goal isn’t profit (although we do have to pay the rent). Our goal is supplying radical words and images to as many people as possible. The books and other media we distribute are published by independent presses, not the corporate giants. We make them widely available to help you make positive (or, hell, revolutionary) changes in the world. For more information on AK Press, or to place an order, see www.akpress.org.
Copyright
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Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
edited by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown
ISBN 978-1-84935-209-3 | Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84935-210-9
Library of Congress Number: 2014958844
© 2015 Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown
This edition © 2015 AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist Studies
Cover design and chapter opener illustrations: John Jennings
Melanie Hardy illustrated the map on page 56 to accompany “The Long Memory”
Alixa Garcia supplied illustrations for “In Spite of Darkness”
Interior Design by Margaret Killjoy (birdsbeforethestorm.net)
Printed in the USA on recycled, acid-free paper.
AK Press
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AK Press UK
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Edinburgh EH8 9YE
www.akuk.com
[email protected]
0131.555.5165
Institute for Anarchist Studies
www.anarchiststudies.org
[email protected]
Institute for Anarchist Studies
The IAS, a nonprofit foundation established in 1996, aims to support the development of anarchism by creating spaces for independent, politically engaged scholarship that explores social domination and reconstructive visions of a free society. All IAS projects strive to encourage public intellectuals and collective self-reflection within revolutionary and/or movement contexts. To this end, the IAS awards grants twice a year to radical writers and translators worldwide, and has funded some eighty projects over the years by authors from numerous countries, including Argentina, Lebanon, Canada, Chile, Ireland, Nigeria, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. It also publishes the online and print journal Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, organizes the Renewing the Anarchist Tradition conference, offers the Mutual Aid Speakers List, and collaborates on this book series, among other projects. The IAS is part of a larger movement seeking to create a nonhierarchical society. It is internally democratic and works in solidarity with people around the globe who share its values. The IAS is completely supported by donations from anarchists and other antiauthoritarians—like you—and/or their projects, with any contributions exclusively funding grants and IAS operating expenses; for more information or to contribute to the work of the IAS, see http://www.anarchiststudies.org/.
Table of Contents
Advance praise for Octavia’s Brood
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Revolution Shuffle
The Token Superhero
the river
Evidence
Black Angel
The Long Memory
Small and Bright
In Spite of Darkness
Hollow
Lalibela
Little Brown Mouse
Sanford and Sun
Runway Blackout
Kafka’s Last Laugh
22XX: One-Shot
Manhunters
Aftermath
Fire on the Mountain
Homing Instinct
Children Who Fly
Star Wars and the American Imagination
The Only Lasting Truth
Outro
Acknowledgments
Bios
Copyright
Institute for Anarchist Studies
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements Page 30
