Science, Myth, and Spirits: Re-inventions of Science Fiction by Women of Colour Writers, Between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the way in which women of colour writers are changing the face of science fiction (sf), both by their mere presence within the genre and through the hybridisation of ‘hard science’ fiction with spirituality, mythology and indigenous scientific literacies from Africa and the Caribbean. The methodology adopted in this paper is a textual analysis of literary and visual media, with specific focus on the geographical, historical and cultural contexts of these texts and of the narrative traditions from which they emerge. Focusing on Jamaican-born Canadian writer Nalo Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring (1998), British-Jamaican author Jennifer Marie Brissett’s ‘Kamanti’s Child’ (2016), and Kenyan writer and director Wanuri Kahiu’s short-film Pumzi (2009), I will argue that global variations on the genre are correcting myopic understandings of what sf looks like, both as a ‘science’-forward branch of speculative fiction and as a traditionally white/male discipline. The result is a healthy genre re-brand, in which mythology and spirituality is set against a backdrop of technology to specifically stress the relevance of women of colour in the future.