Today, I want to focus on the work of other writers.
Firstly, I would encourage you to read these words by Tochi Onyebuchi in his essay, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: The Duty of the Black Writer During Times of American Unrest.
Secondly, you should definitely check out this amazing work I’ve listed below. (Full disclosure: I haven’t read Ring Shout yet—because it’s not available until October. However, I have read P. Djèlí Clark, and he’s incredible. Easily one of my favorite authors right now.)
The Devil in America by Kai Ashante Wilson
In this Tor.com original, scant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.
"There’s so much here to appreciate and admire, fine storytelling with a clearly-realized setting and characters." — Locus
(I haven’t read The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, also by Wilson, but it looks great. It’s on my to-read pile for this summer.)
Fiyah (Summer 2020, Issue 14): Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction
So give us your Black elves, your Black space captains, your Black heretics standing against prophecies and insurmountable odds. Send us your Black wizards and Black gods, your Black sergeants fighting on alien planets. Give us all of your horror, SFF, and relevant subgenres. Because the future of genre is now.
And the future ain’t going to write itself.
Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
Ella has a Thing. She sees a classmate grow up to become a caring nurse. A neighbor's son murdered in a drive-by shooting. Things that haven't happened yet. Kev, born while Los Angeles burned around them, wants to protect his sister from a power that could destroy her. But when Kev is incarcerated, Ella must decide what it means to watch her brother suffer while holding the ability to wreck cities in her hands.
Rooted in the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is as much an intimate family story as a global dystopian narrative. It burns fearlessly toward revolution and has quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience.
Ella and Kev are both shockingly human and immeasurably powerful. Their childhoods are defined and destroyed by racism. Their futures might alter the world.
“[Tochi] Onyebuchi has woven a story as uplifting as it is heartbreaking, an epic ode to the future and past, tiny acts of resistance, love, and the wild unstoppable sweep of revolution.”—Daniel José Older
Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark (available October 13, 2020)
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. But even Ku Kluxes can die.
Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up.
Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
You Perfect, Broken Thing by C.L. Clark
When I leave the kill floor, my legs are wasted. I shuffle to the women’s locker room. I can’t stand anymore, but I know if I sit, I’ll never get back up. At least, not for another hour.
I prop myself up on my open locker. My hands are shaking, too. My fingertips are blue, my skin receding from chawed-down fingernails.
“You don’t look good.” Shell, one of my training partners, spooks me from behind. Her blonde hair is half-brown with sweat. “You can’t afford to train this hard, Coach. You won’t have anything left for the race.”
Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy) by Marlon James
Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.
As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?
Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.
