My Reaction to Steven Barnes' Lion's Blood

While reading the first 30 chapters of Lion’s Blood I was filled with all types of different emotions. The first feeling I had was confusion when the protagonists Aidan, describes his experience of middle passage. It was hard to imagine that this story was being told about a little white boy and his people. My mind just could not comprehend that this was not happening to people of color. All I could picture in my mind when I read was the image of black men, women and children and this left me very disturbed. Why could I not imagine this story from a white perspective? As I continued to read about Kai and his great noble family, I tried to imagine black people holding superior positions and conquering new land. This was not so hard to imagine in my mind though it was at times challenging. For me the most eye opening part of the novel is when Kai and Aidan were being taught about the great pharaohs of Egypt by Babatunde. Babatunde pulls out a scroll with a drawing of and a Pharaoh who looks like a white man! I am not sure if it is Kai or Aidan who asks this question but the novel states “could the Great Pharaoh actually be closer in blood to Aidan than Kai”? I was just as shocked as Kai and Aidan when I read this part of the novel. It was then that I began to question how much of our history do we really know. I think about this not just as an African American but as a human being. How much of human history has been kept from all of the people of the world and or forgotten in order to keep us from knowing our true reality? 

Didn't Cha Include Badu in Your Afrofuturism Playlist?

Erykah Badu’s “Didn’t Cha Know” was the second single off her sophomore album Mama’s Gun. The song speaks to the lost soul. Badu sings of being lost, not knowing which way to turn in life. In the music video Badu appears to have crash landed and is roaming around lost in the desert. The videos imagery helps to illustrate the lyrics, as she tries to figure out “which way to go”.  The video ends with her ultimately being led by a lizard to a watering hole below the earth’s surface. The image of her getting to the water coincides with her lyrics as she sings that “there will be a brighter day”. Badu's lyrics tells the listener that only when one can free their mind (awaken), they can find their way to a better future not only for themselves but for the world. She sings that it is “time to save the world” and with love come life and with life comes freedom for all. With this song, Badu exemplifies the music of Afrofuturism as she attempts to uplift the souls of the listener. She uses her lyrics to envision a better future, and one cannot help but include this song on their Afrofuturism playlist.

After Reading Samuel R Delany's Babel-17. . .

As I sat reading Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17, I wondered what was the significance for my reading this book other than it being assigned by my professor. I struggled through the pages trying to imagine myself in the world that Delany had created. When I finished the last page, still as confused as when I first started reading I decided to see if I could find anything that would help me understand the reading. I came across an interview that Delany had with Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for the Paris Review in which Delany made a statement that put everything in perspective for me. Samuel R Delaney stated

“science fiction isn't just thinking about the world out there. It’s also thinking about how that world might be—a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they’re going to change the world we live in, they—and all of us—have to be able to think about a world that works differently” (2011).

At that moment I started to understand Babel-17 differently. In Babel -17 Delany imagines a future in which communication is a force that brings people together. It doesn't matter what planet they came from, what kind of cosmetic alterations they had, in Delany’s world people were drawn together through communication whether it be spoken language or body language. What Delany and other artists in the world of Afrofuturism provided us with the imagination needed to envision change in our society so that we can work toward the change we wish to see. 

                                                                       Nigerian artist Komi Olaf’s ’3014′