AfroSurrealism

"Rochelle Spencer has written an engaging, thoughtful, and intellectual book, AfroSurrealism: The African Diasporas Surrealist Fiction. Her introduction provides an overview of a new movement in Surrealism, AfroSurrealism, which she describes along with other speculative fiction movements written by people of color. Further, she shows how these movements differ and offers specific strategies for resisting oppression... With grace, talent, and enthusiasm, Spencer has added a significant piece of work to the scholarship of literature for all." - Ethel Morgan Smith, Hollins University, USA "In what must be considered a superb symphony of genealogy, cultural retrieval, and literary analysis, Rochelle Spencers Afro-Surrealism: The African Diaspora's Surrealist Fiction is a very important contribution to the growing literature on the insistent reordering of reality that derives from surrealism, and which, specifically as an aspect of Black writing, is a clarion call to both critique and revolution." - Ato Quayson, Stanford University, USA "With AfroSurrealism: The African Diasporas Surrealist Fiction, Rochelle Spencer has authored a timely critical intervention in a red-hot field. In deft language, she demonstrates how AfroSurrealism 'employs specific historical knowledge for the liberation of the individual and communities,' and in the process expertly disentangles the skeins of Afrofuturism, slipstream, Afropunk, and other related genres. Spencers virtuoso command of the literature ranges from Abiola to iek, but her trenchant analyses never lose sight of AfroSurrealisms ultimate aim: to dare us to imagine a better world." - Jrgen E. Grandt, University of North Georgia, USA

Rochelle Spencer is co-editor of All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color.

Introduction: AfroSurrealism: A New Black Surrealism 1. Mat Johnsons Pym and Helen Oyeyemis boy snow bird: AfroSurrealism, Magical Realism, and the Psychology of Reimagining the Past 2. Edwidge Danticats Claire of the Sea Light, Chris Abanis The Secret History of Las Vegas, and the AfroSurreal Grotesque 3. AfroSurreal and Afrofuturistic Cinematic Storytelling: Junot Dazs The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Colson Whiteheads Zone One 4. The Postmodern Fables of Victor LaValles Big Machine and Summer Brenners Oakland Tales 5. Horror and Immortality in Tananarive Dues Ghost Summer, Nalo Hopkinsons Falling in Love with Hominids, and Rachel Eliza Griffiths Woman after Her Last Wound Conclusion: Jeffery Renard Allen and Sustaining the Surreal Moment Appendix