Bodyminds Reimagined

(Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction

180 pages

English language

Published 2018 by Duke University Press Books.

ISBN:
978-0-8223-7073-4
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OCLC Number:
985689502

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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 …

1 edition

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