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Blog post #6: Memory and Survival in Rivers Solomon’s The Deep

Having been consistently fascinated by works of Afrofuturism, I sought out more only to discover The Deep, an Afrofuturist novel by Rivers Solomon.  The novel is based on a song also entitled The Deep by the group Clipping.  Rivers Solomon took the story embedded within this song and turned it into a truly remarkable novel.  This in itself felt meaningful to me, considering how many centuries of historical and cultural memories of African Americans followed the same trajectory—being passed down in song, before eventually being recorded and written down.  

Both the song and the novel tell the story of mermaids who are the descendants of African women who were pregnant, enslaved, and thrown overboard where they gave birth to babies who breathed the water, as they did in the womb, who adjusted to their new surroundings and made a beautiful life in the deep waters of the ocean in their society of Wajinru.  After so much time, though, that history has been forgotten by everyone, well, everyone except for Yetu—she alone has been chosen to be the new historian, the one charged with remembering on behalf of everyone.  The memories, you see, are just too traumatic, too hard and ugly, and so survival (they thought) required forgetting.  Yetu thinks differently, though.  She believes that survival of her people requires them to remember, to reclaim their memories (traumatic as they are) because that is the only way to reclaim their identities.  

This story captures so much of the African American experience in so many layered ways.  First, the obvious ones.  The Mer people live in the deep ocean, separated from the world above water—this, to me, seemed to be a metaphor for the marginalization of African Americans, specifically in terms of residential segregation and geographic isolation in dense urban areas.  Then there is the idea of adaptation, survival, and the Mer peoples’ ability to adapt to a new environment mirrors African Americans' adaptability to the white dominated culture they were thrown into and not just survived, but thrived within.  Most importantly, though, is the role of cultural memory and the question of whether forgetting or remembering is the best tactic for survival, and in this book it seems Rivers Solomon is suggesting that African Americans (or all descendants of enslaved peoples, not just those in the U.S. alone) have been ignoring the most difficult parts of their history when, in reality, an awakening to selfhood and identity requires knowing the past, even the ugliest and hardest parts of it.  The historian before Yetu, named Zoti, explained why there is only one historian, only one among the wajinru tasked with remembering the past: “I fear if they know the truth of everything, they will not be able to carry on, or they’ll swim to the surface to learn things for themselves that I do not want them to learn” (p. 63).  However, as Yetu’s experience shows us, the burden of remembering is too much for just one person alone to bear—and it is far healthier for Yetu herself and for the entire community when they all remember collectively and, in that memory, they find peace.  This book is about inequality and the legacy of colonialism, but it is also about how (or, whether) we talk about, recognize, and cope with that legacy in the present day.  

Reference:

Solomon, Rivers, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes. 2019. The Deep. New York: Hodder & Stoughton.

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Blog Post #5: Airing My Doubts about Children of Men

The Children of Men is an interesting title, one emphasizing not the role of women but rather the role of men.  It is a film about a world in which infertility has become the world-wide norm—there are no children being born, and the one miraculous child who is born is born not to a man (of course) but to a woman.  The one who will save all of humankind from collapse is not a man wielding weapons, but a woman using the power of birth, the power of the womb, a distinctly female power.  Is this a feminist statement about the idea that women will be saviors of humanity?  Or, is this another iteration of the deeply misogynist idea that women are valuable only, or at least mostly, because of their ability to reproduce?  To be honest, in this film, I see both. And, if the latter interpretation is accurate, then the fact that Kee is a Black woman beings to take on a darker tone, as it recalls the many centuries of oppression that Black women endured being raped, their bodies used for breeding, their bodies considered property, and I worry that the future for Kee and her daughter might not be all that different – The Tomorrow might very well look an awful lot like our past.

Children of Men could be the first chapter of a new rebirth for humankind, one that sees women elevated and one that undoes gender hierarchies of the past.  On the other hand, it is also quite possible that Children of Men is the first chapter of a new world that looks a lot like The Handmaid’s Tale.  What exactly will happen on The Human Project ship the Tomorrow?  Will Kee and her daughter become freer than they were before?  The film assumes so; the audience is asked to assume so too.  But I have my doubts.  Does the power to reproduce give women more political power, or will it end up giving them less of it?  These questions are not really fully answered at the end of Children of Men, but that title…the conspicuous use of the word “Men”…it makes me think that ultimately the answer may very well be the darker, misogynistic one.  Consider that, in the original book Children of Men, it is men who have the infertility problem, not women; but in the film, that is switched…now it is women who are infertile, and there is something problematic to me in that shift, in putting the burden of the world’s infertility onto women.  A world in which a woman’s heroism and value to society comes essentially from her biological fertility is not, to me at least, any great promise of equality at all, in fact, it is quite the opposite—it has all the makings of a patriarchal State in which women’s bodies are owned, controlled, and used, and there are no guarantees that the Human Project will be any different from the oppression and dehumanization Kee is trying to escape.  I know that many see this film as one about hope and faith in the face of apathy and despair; they think it is a film about the possibility of love, faith, and courage in a world so devoid of those very human traits.  Perhaps it is.  But I see a very typical action film merged with a neo-Nativity story (Theo is Joseph and Kee is Mary, she even jokes at one point that she is a virgin) that has its roots deeply set in patriarchal norms and there is no reason to think that any of that will change on the Tomorrow which is, after all, a research facility for infertility.  The film might to some be saying that women are the future; that women are the ones who will provide hope and a future for humanity (it’s feminist message), but to me it is a film saying that in the future, as in the past, women will be valued for their bodies, for their reproductive abilities, and heroism belongs to the men like Theo who ensure the survival of humans with functioning wombs.

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Blog Post #4

“The Space Traders'' by Darrick Bell is a short story originally published in 1992.  But it was also adapted for television in 1994 and made into a short film.  Like all adaptations, the television adaptation of “The Space Traders'' is not exactly like the writing it is based on.  But the differences between them are illuminating, and that is what I would like to discuss in this blog post.  

For those who have not read the story nor seen the made-for-television movie version of it, I will briefly summarize.  In the year 2000, what was then the future, aliens arrive on Earth and make the U.S. an offer—they will provide essential minerals, gold, new technologies that will solve all of our environmental problems, and immense wealth and the means to ensure global hegemonic power too, but in exchange the aliens want all Black Americans.  There is a vote, and 70% of Americans vote to move forward with the deal, while just 30% vote to say no to the Space Traders. And that is how both the short story and the movie version of it end—with 20 million Black Americans lined up, stripped to their undergarments, entering the space ship and nobody knows their future (the Space Traders will not tell us why they want all Black Americans…for good, for evil, we do not know).  

There are some difficult, deeply uncomfortable questions raised by this story that essentially argues that America is no better, no more equitable or inclusive and just as deeply racist as this nation was for the first century of its existence when slavery was not just legal but socially, morally acceptable too.  But while the short story seems to content itself with a, forgive me here, black-and-white portrayal of racial divisions in the U.S. today, the made-for-tv movie deals with a far more nuanced picture of that racial divisions are really like in America.  

The biggest difference between the short story and the made-for-tv movie was the ending.  In the story, Gleason Golightly is a prominent Black conservative who is part of the President’s Cabinet and who plays a big role in top-level discussions about how to answer the Space Traders’ offer. As a Black man, all of his education, cultural capital, and political power cease to matter—ultimately, he and his family are sent to space with the traders.  But that is NOT how the movie version ends.  

In the movie version, Golightly and his children are sent away with the Space Traders, but his wife is not—she is too light-skinned; she tries to sneak away with her family, but she is stopped because she is too light-skinned to count as “Black”.  The movie version, you see, engages in a far more nuanced understanding of what race is, what racism is, and it is one that gets into the weeds of how race was treated historically, for instance with laws breaking down who counts as “Black” or “white” according to fractions (like whether you are 1/16th Black), dividing racial designations into a crazy number of categories.  It wasn’t just a racial classification system, it was a caste system.  For example, Title 42, Section 267 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes from the 1830s stated that: “In signifying race, a person having one-thirty-second or less of Negro blood shall not be deemed as “colored,” a “mulatto,” “black,” “negro,” “quadroon,” “mestizo,” “colored person” or a “person of color” (Diamond & Cottrol, p. 257).   A “mulatto” was half white and half Black, while a “quadroon” was legally defined as someone with one-quarter African ancestry, and though this law did not mention “octoroon” this too was a term meaning someone with one-eight African ancestry; there were hexadecaroons in some laws too—the designations of racial classification seems endless (Diamond & Cottrol).  The history of racism in the U.S. is not a simple one of Black versus white; it is a nuanced and complex history of prejudice entrenched in laws, in society, in the very way we defined one another and ourselves.  And thus, to me, there is something more honest in the movie version of “The Space Traders,” something more hard-hitting in its acknowledgement that our history of racial divisiveness is a nuanced one with far more complexity than just a “black-and-white” issue.  

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Blog Post #3: We Need to Talk About Kong

There are certain films that will forever be remembered partly, if not mostly, for their overt racism.  Films like Birth of a Nation (1915) or Disney’s Song of the South (1946) spring to mind. But any list of overtly and undeniably racist films would certainly also include the original King Kong from 1933 (which is sci-fi, I think, so I believe it “counts” for purposes of this course’s scope).  

Sadly, the contrast between the blatant primitiveness of people of color in the film as opposed to the oh-so-“civilized” white people in the film is stark.  But it is not depictions of humans that makes the film so racist; it is Kong himself.  The film is considered an allegory for white fears of Black male sexuality, as Kong not only falls in love with Anne Darrow, but she too develops an emotional, if not romantic, attachment to Kong.  Alternatively, the film can also be understood as a metaphor for granting Black Americans freedom after the Civil War, and Kong’s escape and rampage in New York is understood by some as a neo-Confederate criticism of the consequences of acknowledging the basic human rights of millions of Black Americans.   

Oh yes, the original 1933 movie is racist.  But here’s the kicker.  Could you imagine Song of the South being remade today?  Neither can I. In fact, Disney does its best to never let that movie see the light of day.  Birth of a Nation was remade in 2016, but it hardly resembled the original film at all (thank goodness) and was quickly overshadowed by the serious rape allegations made against its director.  

King Kong, on the other hand, seems to get re-made again and again once every decade or two, and it is always the same story, always the same characters.  When it comes to Kong, we don’t even want much of an update.  We seem to love him just as he is, as he always was (gulp). He also gets pitted against notable opponents, namely Godzilla—the first one of their matchups came out in the 1960s. Then, in 1976, we got another King Kong, in 1998 The Mighty Kong went straight to video, and in 2005 we got Peter Jackson’s King Kong.  

Kong movies have popped up every so often, but in the 2010s something shifted.  The 2010s that saw the most of Kong films, by a long shot.  Since 2010, we got Kong: King of the Apes, MonsterVerse, Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla vs Kong as well as a TV series called Skull Island and just last year, in 2023, we got another feature film, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.  

With all of this in mind, we now arrive at an interesting question.  Why?  Why, since 2010, have we been suddenly inundated with King Kong content?  Well, I humbly offer a suggestion. In 2008, Obama won; he won again in 2012.  And seeing a Black man win the presidency brought the racists out of the closet, so to speak.  The memes became uglier, the conspiracy theories (that Obama is Muslim, or that he was not really born in the U.S. at all) abounded.  And all of them had to do with his skin color.  

I propose that King Kong movies become more abundant and more culturally relevant again during upswings in cultural racism in the U.S.  Sadly, that was the case in 1915 and still is the case a full century later in the 2010s.  King Kong in all its iterations is still racist.  It always was.  But for some reason, we’ve become numb to the racist roots of this indelible character and symbol that has become almost as American as amber waves of grain.  But when audiences cheer Kong, when we root for him to kill Godzilla and restore that comfortable feeling of American supremacy if just for a moment, and if only in science fiction, it not just Kong we are cheering on and supporting—it is the racist ideologies that gave birth to him in the first place. 

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Blog Post #2: Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)

(1).  In the book, Lauren lives a life that is not unlike my own life today.  I live in a suburb, protected from real-life issues like poverty, rampant pollution of the air and water and soil in many urban settings, and violence.  All of these are issues in my own world that make it necessary to create an Earthseed community.  However, it does occur to me that the Earthseed community (like the suburbs) isolates people from the problems and may provide something like a fresh start for humanity, but it does not necessarily solve the problems where they are occurring.  Still, an Earthseed community would indeed provide shelter from poverty, pollution, and violence.  

(2).  One Earthseed verse that stands out to me is “the only lasting truth is change. God is changing.”  The quote is short, but there is a lot packed into it and it occurs twice in the novel, both in Chapter 1 and again in Chapter 7.  I am attracted to the paradox this verse is expressing, the idea that the only permanent and stable truth is change.  Rather than change being something to fear, instead it should be something to embrace.  I would apply this concept to my new Earthseed community by working on change toward equity, toward safety, toward humanity and embracing every person’s unique and inherent value.  Another Earthseed verse that stood out to me is from Chapter 23, and it is somewhat darker than the first quote; in fact, it is a warning.  “God is your harshest teacher: subtle, demanding. Learn or die.”  This quote could be applied to my own Earthseed community by emphasizing to everyone in the community that embracing change, giving up our old ideas and constructs, is not an easy thing to do-it is hard, harsh, even painful.  In my community, I’d want people to give up thinking about themselves as “better” than others because they have a higher social status, more education or more beauty than someone else; instead, in my community I want to value equality (not status), wisdom (not degrees), and authenticity and ethical beauty from the inside (not external beauty).  It it hard to give up ideas and hierarchies that make us feel better than others, but this is a harsh lesson and God, as the quote says, is a harsh teacher.  These are lessons we need to learn, or we will die mired in oppression and false consciousness.

(3).  I would go to the mountains to create my community.  Like military leaders and petty kings since human civilization began, I’d find the higher ground.  There is something metaphorical there too.  Indeed, higher ground quite literally provides a strategically good option for better protection.  But the higher ground can also become a symbol for what we are doing with this new community, the progress we are seeking in a moral and humanistic sense. 

(4).  Anyone can join this community because anyone can change.  There should be no limits on who can join.  There would, however, be limits on who can stay.  The community must have some mechanism for expelling members who make the community unsafe. 

(5).  I think that a group of elected elders would be a good option for leadership of my new community.  I trust wisdom more than education; I trust experience more than abstract knowledge.  Consider, if you were building a house, would you rather hire someone who had read a book about how to build one or someone who had already built five houses before?  I would want our leadership to be people who have a long lifetime of experience and who understand human nature, behavior, and consequences better than others.  

(6).  I would invent the Pain Meter.  This is a device that will read electrical and nueorogical signals in the brain to determine if someone is feeling any type of pain whether it is physical or emotional in nature; it can also quantify that pain and tell us how much pain that person is in.  One of the purposes of my community will be healing.  I want people to heal from the pain of cruelty, rejection, oppression, violence and trauma they’ve experienced.  I want a community of happiness, for I believe that happiness is the best path to equity and justice; it is those who hate themselves most who tend to project that into hating others.  But people tend to be unable to see or express their pain sometimes, and a Pain Meter would not only allow others to understand someone’s pain but would allow that individual to acknowledge it for themselves too.  

(7).  My Earthseed community will survive through cooperation, shared labor, and a shared sense of purpose.  The community will have to be close to basic resources like soil that is good for farming and a clean source of water.  But ultimately, this community will survive through its bonds, through mutual respect, and through a shared sense of commitment to making a better version of human society than has been done in the past.

(8).  My Earthseed community will make learning psychology a basic subject for all children, starting at an early age.  There is no reason why studying psychology should be relegated to the university level alone; everyone, starting pretty young, should learn the terms, theories, and harness the vocabulary to better understand and communicate about their own inner lives and to better understand those of others too.  Second, my Earthseed community will not condemn anyone to one single job, one single task that they do day in and day out for the rest of their adult lives.  Jobs will be rotated, everyone will be the janitor and the teacher, the food preparer and the monks devoted to prayer—the purpose of work is then not one’s own advancement in their individual career, rather the purpose is really for the community itself.  I also think this system might help prevent social hierarchies and all the damage they cause.  

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Blogpost 1

The theme of life versus death stands out in PUMZI by Wanuri Kahiu.  The protagonist, Asha, has a name that means “life.”  She finds life in the seed, makes life when she plants it, and dreams of life as well.  But she lives in a society that has deemed the outside world, not “dangerous” or “bad” (it might be both of those things, but those are not the words they choose to use), but “dead.”  When Asha applies for an exit visa to leave their confined indoor community to seek the origins of a sample of water-rich soil and a germinating healthy seed, the committee denies her request because “the outside is dead.”  Asha replies, “but the soil is alive.”  

This is a society convinced that the outside world is lifeless, inhospitable.  And it is no coincidence that the majority of the characters we see and interact with are female, most of them Black women.  As a woman myself, I feel a similar message coming from the broader cultural consciousness today telling me that the world is inhospitable to me, as a woman, and to me as a child of immigrants on account of my race.  The still-growing impact of the critical race theory has allowed more and more women of color to become conscious of (and gave us a new vocabular of words and ideas with which to explain) the enormity of our cultural legacy of racism and sexism and the intersectionality of both.  That is a good thing, a great thing.  But it also gave us a new emphasis on the dangers out there, and thus a new consciousness also came with a new realization that American culture is inherently infected, toxic, inhospitable to the lives of Black Americans and anyone outside the hegemonic norms of cultural expectations.  But Asha pushes back against the assumption that the outside world is hopelessly inhospitable to life; she says, “but that is lie, it has to be, look…” and she shows the committee her dreams, her vision of the tree, of water, of life.  And for the second time in the film, Asha is reminded to take her “dream suppressants.”  Don’t hope; don’t dream; change is dangerous and impossible, her culture tells her.  

No matter how inhospitable the outside world may seem, we need to dream of life and to be brave enough to seek it, make it.  And Asha does just that.  When she steps outside, the earth is covered in trash, the detritus of centuries of apathy and waste.  And this is very much a metaphor, I think, for how our world really is today, not just polluted with centuries of material/physical waste, but also polluted with centuries of toxic ideas and beliefs, with racism and sexism.  But, through all this pollution, there are spots of warm, water-rich earth.  There are opportunities for change, for hope, and this is what Asha’s journey represents to me.  Pour your sweat into your dream, though it may be a tiny seed in what everyone tells you is an inhospitable desert.  And all of the women, all of the Black leaders and advocates who have come before have fertilized those spots of opportunity with their lives, just as Asha did for the tiny plant that becomes a tree only with the nourishment of her literal body (at least, that is how I understood the ending).  This is the path to a more hospitable world, to a more equitable and free world, and this is what Kahiu and his character Asha really have to teach us.