PAMLA 2021: The City in Afrofuturism
“Cities controlled by big companies are old hat in science fiction,” writes diarist Lauren Olamina in Parable of the Sower. Be it site of dystopian horror or utopian haven, The City in all its iterations serves speculative and science fiction in a variety of ways: as setting, plot device, character-in-itself, metanarrative reference point, all-purpose trope. Yet as metaphorical stand-in for ‘civilization’—and all that loaded signifier may entail—the city as trope may be all the more richly complicated within afrofuturism, allowing authors to ground their narratives in explorations of race, gender, class, and an entire array of intersectional complexities of human identity, community and social marginalization.