Stories for Chip (18 page)

I was so ridiculously nervous because Delany's work, his presence, and his clarity around the intersections of identities meant the world (in fact, multiple worlds) to me.

His work was vital to me even before I had a framework through which to articulate its vitalness. As a Black radical nerd in high school, I felt that Delany's work connected with me via race; I had found only a handful of Black science fiction writers at that time, and I treasured each one as a reinforcement of my very right to exist in a world that often made me feel like I shouldn't. A reinforcement of my right that Brooks spoke of, to re-imagine this world, and to imagine many others.

I've since taught courses on science fiction in which I assign students the iconic
Dark Matter
anthologies, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas. Delany's essay “Racism and Science Fiction” in the first collection is a powerful articulation of racism as a system of oppression, rather than just individual acts of prejudice, an exploration of how racism functions within the science fiction genre and community.

His writings in general, but especially Delany's nonfiction, modeled for me that I didn't have to engage in a politics of respectability (really a politics of assimilation) as a Black writer. I did not have to write what felt safe to the mainstream, what was expected of me by those whose ideas had been shaped by shallow stereotypes. Rather than bemoan the fact that the larger white society labeled me a “Black writer,” which to them meant fitting me into a very narrow box, I was able to claim the mantle as fully mine, and know that mantle in no way constrained my vision or my work. If anything, it allowed me to stand in concert with ancestors, elders, and contemporaries who were showing that Blackness, like space, is vast, seemingly infinite, and continually expanding. As hip-hop emcee Q-Tip put it simply, “Black is Black.”
2

Part of Delany's
Dark Matter
essay intones the names of those Black writers before him who used the fantastic to explore conditions of identity and power, honoring their work and connecting it to his. In the same way I connect my writing, work, and vision to Delany, to Butler, through them I also connect to Black folks enslaved in this country, who were the ultimate science fiction creators, alchemists, miracle birthers. I co-edited the anthology
Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements
with adrienne maree brown, another Black woman, and we carry with us strongly the idea that we are walking science fiction.

By this we mean that we are living, breathing embodiments of the most daring futures our ancestors were able to imagine. Enslaved Black folks had no reason to believe generations without chains would ever exist. In fact, every part of society screamed it was unrealistic to hope for an end to slavery; the most they could hope for was reform, “a kinder, gentler slavery.” But our enslaved ancestors dreamed of freedom, and they bent reality and reshaped the world to create us, all of us Black people who walk the Earth today. We believe all of us who come from communities with historic and institutional trauma and oppression are walking science fiction, and that the ancestors' futuristic envisioning does not culminate with us.

We must not only look forward when using visionary science fiction to build new worlds, but we must engage in the concept of Sankofa to create the future. The Andinkra symbol for Sankofa, used in Ghana, is a bird moving forward but with its head looking behind. It is often connected to the proverb that translates, “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”
3
We must go back for the dreams of those who came before and sculpt the future from this breathing clay. We have the right, the responsibility, and the privilege of continuing this collective dreaming towards total and true liberation into the future, and to build it in the here and now.

It is this level of real-life world-building and transformation adrienne and I hope to add to with our book. Offering visionary science fiction as a process for engaging in liberatory collective dreaming, and then pulling those dreams down from the stars and making them a reality. Adrienne has been traveling the world facilitating Octavia Butler emergent strategy sessions, asking, “What lessons for our movements for justice can we learn from Octavia's writing, from science fiction?” One of our contributors, Morrigan Phillips, developed a science fiction and direct action organizing workshop that uses science fiction worlds as testing grounds for real life-tactics and strategies. We have been holding collective storytelling/visioning workshops, asking how we can imagine the social issues we struggle with into the future and prepare for those worlds now, centering them in humanity.

Much of my work has focused on alternatives to incarceration, and I believe this work serves as a prime example of why our movements for justice need science fiction. We have been told for so long that prisons and policing are all we have to address harm done in our communities, told that there are no other options. Visionary science fiction allows us to mine our pasts for knowledge and solutions, and use those to envision systems of justice and accountability that prioritize wholeness and healing over retribution and punishment. Centering conversations about race, centering communities that have been marginalized and oppressed, allows us to create institutions that will make our communities stronger and safer.

In his
Dark Matter
essay, Delany also offers visions of alternatives to the oppressive systems that shape all of our lives: “Because we still live in a racist society, the only way to combat it in any systematic way is to establish—and repeatedly revamp—anti-racist institutions and traditions.”
4
It is not enough to just write well as Black people to somehow dispel racism; we actually and actively have to dream of and build alternative systems. Science fiction is one process that allows us to step outside of everything we think we know. To stop asking the question, “What is realistic?” and begin to answer the question, collectively, “What do we dream of?”

In my
City Paper
article about him I wrote, “Delany's determination to discuss issues of sexuality, race, and gender in the context of his liquid, complex writing sets him apart from authors who offer easy solutions. Delany's writings are a reflection of life, where there are no easy problems, let alone well-defined answers
5
.”

I am thankful for the questions Delany's work raises, especially the visionary question, “What do we want?” His creations give us so many opportunities to question—well, everything. These convoluted futures he gave us, these “ambiguous heterotopias,” allow us to see race, class, gender, sexuality clearly. And perhaps more importantly, they allow us to see the intersections of these identities and their oppressions, the ways systems of oppression interlock, thus allowing us to understand that any alternative institutions and traditions we create must do the same.

My first encounters with Delany's work also showed me how these larger conversations are an external manifestation of each person's internal realities. Like light expanding as it moves farther from its source, touching and illuminating, that far-reaching light is still the same tiny spark at its core. His memoirs and essays, what he calls “promiscuous autobiography,” framed around his intersectional analysis and experience of being a Black gay man in America, fundamentally changed my thinking around sex and power and identity. They show in practice what Delany writes in his
Dark Matter
essay: “…transgression inheres, however unarticulated, in every aspect of the black writer's career in America.
6
” Delany's work, of course, articulates it so clearly you could hear it on Triton.

Delany's promiscuous autobiography also gave me the space to include myself in my work, to see my life, in all its messy complexities, not as my private shame, but as composed of pieces of larger issues we are all holding and exploring. Because it is only when we bring into our work ourselves in all our contradictions, at our most human, that we are useful in imagining new futures and systems of visionary wholeness.

My 2001 interview ended up going extremely well, mostly because Samuel Delany was one of the most gracious, open, and welcoming folks I've ever had the pleasure of interviewing. He was gentle with my fumbles, helpful in providing context when I didn't know to ask for it, and generous with his time. The story actually ended up being my first (and last) cover story with
City Paper
, though that is more to his credit as a fascinating subject rather than to any journalistic ability on my part.

Samuel Delany's work, in every genre and every way, stands as a testament to the scope of imagination, highlighting the idea that you can both create the fantastical as visionary and also view the everyday through a visionary lens. And his words remind us that, ultimately, they are one and the same, for those of us who are walking science fiction.

Endnotes:

¹
Interview. “Avery Brooks and Justin Emeka discuss ‘Death of a Salesman' at Oberlin.” Filmed at Oberlin on September 1, 2008. Produced by Daniel Schloss.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Avery+Brooks+and+Justin+Emeka+discuss+%22Death+of+a+Salesman%22+at+Oberlin

²
“Black is Black.” The Jungle Brothers featuring Q-Tip,
Straight Out the Jungle,
1988, Idlers/Warlock Records.

³
“African Tradition, Proverbs, and Sankofa.”
Sweet Charity: The Story of Spirituals.
Retrieved Feb. 11, 2015.
http://www.spiritualsproject.org/sweetchariot/Literature/sankofa.php

⁴
Thomas, Sheree Renée, ed.
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora.
New York: Aspect Books, 2000, pg. 396-397.

⁵
Imarisha, Walidah. “Sex, Race and Outer Space: How being black and gay influenced groundbreaking science fiction author Samuel R. Delany.”
City Paper,
Philadelphia, June 21-28, 2001.
http://citypaper.net/articles/062101/cs.bq.delany.shtml

⁶
Thomas, Sheree Renée, ed.
Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora.
New York: Aspect Books, 2000, pg. 392.

Alex Jennings

All of us have special ones who have loved us into being.

—Fred Rogers.

Brass Monkey finished off the last of the Hate City gangsters by stuffing him into a dumpster in an alleyway off Jackson Avenue and crimping its lid closed. The blow she'd dealt to the nerve cluster at the base of his neck had shorted out his powers—which weren't so hot to begin with—and he'd be helpless long enough for the police to arrive and cart him off to Powered Holding.

After taking a quick look around to see who was watching, Monkey pulled the Mask from her face. It came away easily enough, and Althea Dayo bloomed back into being.

It was just after eleven on a Sunday morning. Monkey had spent all night chasing those Hate City assholes across town after they tried to spring a trap on her in Wallingford.

In human form, Thea's senses were not as keen—which was good, since this alleyway smelled of burnt hair and human waste. Even so, Thea felt an angry rumbling in her belly and knew she must have skipped dinner again last night. She shook her head, irritated with herself, as she opened her leather satchel and slid the Mask inside. She dug around a little, hoping for an energy bar, but all she found was a couple of crushed M & Ms.

She shrugged and popped the candy, considering what to do next. If she'd thought before changing back, she would have made her way home to Capitol Hill first, but now she'd have to bus her way there, which would take longer than she could safely wait to eat.

Thea bent a little and clutched her belly, grimacing. Her period was at least a week away, so she knew she must have missed lunch, as well. Transforming back and forth used up a lot of energy, and without fuel, Thea's body couldn't help but register its protest. We gotta take better care of ourself, Thea thought.

Brass Monkey didn't answer.

Thea grabbed her cell phone and flipped it open as she slid into character. She dialed 911.

“Please state the nature of—?”

Thea cut her off. “Oh my God! Oh God! I just—! There was a guy in a fez and sunglasses, and he shot beams or something out of his hands and Brass Monkey hit him, and they went into an alleyway, and I heard them crashing around! Send cops! Send everybody! He's got powers!”

◊

Thea was nearly broke after paying rent on Thursday, but Cham and Diep at Green Leaf usually let her eat for free. Besides, it was Sunday, which meant Simon would be working. Thea hadn't seen him in days. As she walked, Thea considered the events of the previous night.

Honestly, she felt a little sorry for the Hate City Boys. With their leader dead, they didn't seem able to get it together anymore—their powers had dulled, and they hadn't executed a successful crime in months. Not even so much as a bank job. Every time Thea ran into one of them (in the old days, they'd never traveled alone) his suit looked slept-in, his fez looked half-squashed, or his mirrored sunglasses were all scratched-up.

But who was she kidding? A little despair wasn't a tenth of what those jackasses deserved. The only reason they'd never killed anyone was because Brass Monkey stopped them at every turn. Besides: anyone who needed a father figure so badly that he'd place himself under the influence of Chairman Bombast had failed at life as far as Thea was concerned.

Thea turned down 8th Avenue South, rubbing her belly as she went. The restaurant was a hole-in-the-wall, but Thea loved it. The furniture was cheap and ill-matched, as were the dishes, but everything was immaculately clean. As soon as Thea walked in, she smelled meat and herbs sizzling on the grill, heard the kitchen staff yelling at each other in Thai, saw Simon bump his way out of the kitchen balancing a broad platter piled with dishes.