SJPL Picks: AfrofuturismLike this list

31 items

• Lost Ark Dreaming

  Okungbowa, Suyi Davies,

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  The brutally engineered class divisions of Snowpiercer meets Rivers Solomon's The Deep in this high-octane post-climate disaster novella written by Nommo Award-winning author Suyi Davies Okungbowa. Off the coast of West Africa, decades…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Convergence Problems

  Talabi, Wole,

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  Convergence Problems is a new short story collection from award-winning, Nebula-nominated Nigerian author Wole Talabi. Containing brand-new stories, rewrites of early work, and a few previously published pieces, Wole Talabi’s new…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Jamaica Ginger

  and Other Concoctions

  Hopkinson, Nalo,

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  This long-awaited new collection of her deeply imaginative short fiction offers striking journeys to far-flung futures and fantastical landscapes. In Nalo Hopkinson's first collection of stories since 2015, a woman and her cyborg pig eke…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Womb City

  Tsamaase, Tlotlo,

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  This genre-bending African futurist horror novel blends The Handmaid's Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, cyberpunk body-hopping ghost story exploring motherhood, memory, and a woman's right to her own body. Nelah seems to have it…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Blackheart Man

  a Novel

  Hopkinson, Nalo,

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  Veycosi, in training as a griot (an historian and musician), hopes to sail off to examine the rare Alamat Book of Light and thus secure a spot for himself on Cynchin's Colloquium of scholars. However, unexpected events prevent that from…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• She Who Knows

  Okorafor, Nnedi,

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  When she receives The Call, which has never happened to a female in the history of her village, thirteen-year-old Najeeba must journey with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake where her presence changes everything and her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Splinter in the Sky

  a Novel

  Ashing-Giwa, Kemi,

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  A “breathtaking space opera” ( Publishers Weekly , starred review) about a young tea expert who is taken as a political prisoner and recruited to spy on government officials—a role that may empower her to win back her nation’s…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Shadow Speaker

  Okorafor, Nnedi,

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  Book 1 of 2; originally published 2007. In West Africa in 2070, after fifteen-year-old "shadow speaker" Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, she embarks on a dangerous journey across the Sahara to find Jaa, her father's killer, and upon…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Goliath

  Onyebuchi, Tochi,

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  In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have departed the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Africa Risen

  a New Era of Speculative Fiction

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  From award-winning editorial team Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight comes an anthology of thirty-two original stories showcasing the breadth of fantasy and science fiction from Africa and the African…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Memory Librarian

  and Other Stories of Dirty Computer /

  Monáe, Janelle,

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  Whoever controls our memories controls the future. Dirty Computer introduced a world in which thoughts—as a means of self-conception—could be controlled or erased by a select few. And whether human, A.I., or other, your life and sentience…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Sweep of Stars

  Broaddus, Maurice,

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  Maurice Broaddus's Sweep of Stars is the first in a trilogy that explores the end of an empire. Epic in scope and intimate in voice, it follows members of the Muungano empire - a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretches from…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Noor

  Okorafor, Nnedi,

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  When everything goes wrong on a trip to the local market, AO, a woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations, must race against time across the deserts of Northern Nigeria with a Fulani herdsman named DNA in a world where…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Destroyer of Light

  Brissett, Jennifer Marie,

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  Having destroyed Earth, the alien conquerors resettle the remains of humanity on the planet of Eleusis. In the four habitable areas of the planet—Day, Dusk, Dawn, and Night—the haves and have nots, criminals and dissidents, and former…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Remote Control

  Okorafor, Nnedi,

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  The day Fatima forgot her name, Death paid a visit. From here on in she would be known as Sankofa--a name that meant nothing to anyone but her, the only tie to her family and her past. Her touch is death, and with a glance a town can fall.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Riot Baby

  Onyebuchi, Tochi,

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  Rooted in foundational loss and the hope that can live in anger, Riot Baby is both a global dystopian narrative and an intimate family story with quietly devastating things to say about love, fury, and the black American experience. Ella…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Sacrifice of Darkness

  Gay, Roxane,

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  Graphic novel. Follow one woman's powerful journey through this new landscape as she discovers love, family, and the true light in a world seemingly robbed of any. As she challenges notions of identity, guilt, and survival she'll find that…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Parable of the Sower

  Butler, Octavia E,

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  In 2025 California, an eighteen-year-old African American woman, suffering from a hereditary trait that causes her to feel others' pain as well as her own, flees northward from her small community and its desperate savages.

• The Lesson

  a Novel

  Turnbull, Cadwell, 1987-

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  The people of the U.S. Virgin Islands tensely coexist with an alien species on an undisclosed research mission on Earth, until the death of a boy plunges three families into a conflict that will touch everyone and teach a terrible lesson.

• The Rosewater Redemption

  Thompson, Tade,

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  Book 2 of series. All is quiet in the city of Rosewater as it expands on the back of the gargantuan alien Wormwood. Those who know the truth of the invasion keep the secret. The government agent Aminat, the lover of the retired sensitive…Read moreRead more of this annotation