How Black women are making their mark in genre fiction
Black Panther/ Black Panther (@Twitter)
This past year, Black women did not come to play. The highest grossing film of 2019 - and now arguably of all time - was 'Avengers: Endgame,' a Marvel ensemble film featuring several Black, female characters who made their mark in the films leading up to this one, and who represent a wide range of Black womanhood. From Thor: Ragnarok (2017), we saw Tessa Thompson as the battle-weary Valkyrie - a role originally held by a blonde, white woman. And then in Black Panther (2018), there was Lupita Nyong’o’s fighter/spy Nakia, Danai Gurira’s imposing yet witty General Okoye, Letitia Wright’s teenage genius Shuri, and Angela Bassett as the regal Queen Ramonda.
Genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction overall) tends to be stereotyped as particularly white and male, especially in terms of who the protagonists and the creators are. But there have always been women of colour, and in particular Black women, in creative roles in the genre world. I’m thinking of writers like Octavia Butler who carved out space for Black women characters in sci-fi from the 70s onward, with stories like her Dawn trilogy and the Parable of the Sower series which remark on how the future of the human race lies in the strength and choices of Black women. Or, consider actress Nichelle Nichols breaking barriers both on-screen in Star Trek, as well as off-screen through her work with NASA and various other science-based initiatives. Beyond the Marvel Cinematic Universe, news of Black women taking the reins of a few "iconic" characters shook the news cycle in ways an announcement of its kind typically would not. When Disney first shared that the reboot for its widely beloved Little Mermaid would be a live-action film, there was shock as Halle Bailey - one half of singing sister duo Chloe x Halle - was cast as the titular character of Ariel.
“Genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy and speculative fiction overall) tends to be stereotyped
as particularly white and male, especially in terms of who the protagonists and the creators are.”
While some opposed to the casting voiced outrage ranging from “she can’t be Ariel, she’s not a redhead!”, to the pseudo-scientific, “mermaids can’t be Black because there’s no way to create melanin under the sea”, the other side set about creating pre-emptive fan art of a redheaded, dreadlocked, brown-skinned mermaid, and applauding Disney for allowing a new generation of young Black girls to see themselves reflected in a fairytale. (To return to the MCU for a moment, when Spider-Man: Homecoming cast Disney alumna Zendaya Coleman as MJ, a twist on the Mary-Jane role made famous by Kirsten Dunst, the redhead argument also came up pretty quickly in negative pre-reviews. The redheaded Zendaya killed any doubts with her performances in the two Spider-Man films since.)
Not long after that, the most famous spy franchise in the world announced that the new 007 was going to be a Black woman - actress Lashana Lynch who was most recently seen in another MCU property Captain Marvel as the title character’s best friend, hotshot ace pilot Maria Rambeau. Further details of the casting revealed that the character of James Bond continues to exist in the film universe, but there has been an in-narrative reclassifying of the famous code number to allow a new agent to take the 007 designation.
“As trends come and go, the real staying power rests in the ability to fully tell our own stories.”
More recently, there has also been a surge in Black women writers kicking ass in the speculative fiction world. N.K Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth trilogy that features several complex Black women protagonists, won the Hugo Award consecutively in 2016, 2017 and 2018 for each book of her series. She was the first African-American author to win the award, and the first author, period, to ever do so for three consecutive years.
Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor has also been lauded for her afrofuturist sci-fi and fantasy work, and her award-winning book Who Fears Death is slated to become an HBO series, executive produced by none other than George R.R. Martin.
In the young adult fiction (YA) world, Tomi Adeyemi - another Nigerian- American author - brought the world of the Yoruba Orishas into the mainstream with Children of Blood and Bone, an African-infused fantasy featuring a young Black girl coming into her power in a world similar but different to the one we inhabit. Her book is also getting the big-screen treatment, as Fox 2000 has slated it for development as a live-action movie.
With the increasing presence of Black women as visible roles within genre fiction worlds, the hope is that this translates to a wider acceptance of diverse voices and faces in the genres most known for exploring infinite possibilities. And not just in front of the screen, but in the writers’ rooms, on the producers’ calls, in the directors’ chairs. As trends come and go, the real staying power rests in the ability to fully tell our own stories.