Here we are, February 2025, honouring Black History Month. We are all invited to stop, in order to consider history, to account for histories that demand changework, and to find inspiration in the Black brilliance that shapes every aspect of day to day life in societies around the world. My inspiration comes in part from the many incredible Afro futurisms that have shaped speculative storytelling in ways that clear a wide path towards better worlds:
Everything you touch you change
Everything you change changes you.
- Octavia Butler
Walida Imarisha (in her Introduction to Octavia’s Brood, Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Activists, edited by Imarisha and adrienne maree brown) writes:
“Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction. We are dreaming new worlds every time we think about the changes we want to make in this world.…Art and culture themselves are time travelling, planes of existence where the past, present, and future shift seamlessly in and out.
And for those of us from communities with historic collective trauma, we must understand that each of us is already science fiction walking around on two legs. Our ancestors dreamed us up and then bent reality to create us. For adrienne and myself, as two Black women, we think of our ancestors in chains, dreaming about a day when their children’s children’s children would be free. They had no reason to believe this was likely. But together they dreamed of freedom and they brought us into being. We are responsible for interpreting their regrets and realizing their imaginings”.
Wishing you much inspiration, endless imagination, and wonder-ful worldbuilding!
Warmly,
Trish