Bodyminds Reimagined
Subtitle: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction
By: Sami Schalk
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Published: 2018
Place of publication: Durham, USA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 180
ISBN-13: 9780822370734; 9780822370888
Copyright date: 2018
Subjects: 18.06 Anglo-American literature; Speculative fiction; History and criticism; American literature; Race in literature; Women authors; African American authors; Gender identity in literature; People with disabilities in literature
Other titles: Body minds reimagined :
Description: Traces how black women's speculative fiction complicates the understanding of bodyminds - the intertwinement of the mental and the physical - in the context of race, gender and (dis)ability. Bridging black feminist theory and disability studies, th author demonstrates that this genre's political potential lies in the authors' creation of bodyminds that transcend reality's limitations. She reads (dis)ability in neo-slave narratives by Octavia Butler ("Kindred") and Phyllis Alesia Perry ("Stigmata") not only as representing the literal injuries suffered under slavery, but also as a metaphor for the legacy of racial violence. The fantasy worlds in works by N.K. Jemisin, Shawntelle Madison, and Nalo Hopkinson - where werewolves have obsessive-compulsive disorder and blind demons can see magic - destabilize social categories and definitions of the human, calling into question the very nature of identity. in these texts, as well as in Butler's "Parable" series, able-mindedness and able-bodiedness are socially constructed and upheld through racial and gendered norms. Outlining (dis)ability's centrality to speculative fiction, the author shows how these works open up new social possibilities while changing conceptualizations of identity and oppression through nonrealist contexts.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages [159]-174) and index.
Table of contents: title: Metaphor and materiality: disability and neo'slave narratives; title: Whose reality is it anyway? deconstructing able-mindedness; title: The future of bodyminds, bodyminds of the future; title: Defamiliarizing (dis)ability, race, gender, and sexuality.