“I Desperately Need Visions of Black People Thriving”: Emancipating the Fantastic With Black Women’s Words

The genre of science fiction has often been hostile to readers who are not white, middle class, heterosexual men. Though the genre has historically ignored Dark Others; however, they are never completely omitted from the story, as they are often characterized as the creature, the alien, or the monster. In this way, the futuristic windows and mirrors available to Black women and girls are often cracked, tiny, or shattered. The primary objective of this paper, then, is to further conversations about the need for diverse books and genres in schools by focusing on the science fiction reading histories of Black women and highlighting the features that draw Black women to the genre. The reading histories of Black women can provide further data that showcases the need for new mythologies, ones that center Dark Others prospering in the future.