We know it has been a while since you have received an update about the visionary sci-fi anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction From Social Justice Movements.
That is because we have been involved in a transition and re-evaluation phase. It’s the end of that phase, and we are so happy to be able to officially announce two incredible things: 1) the final list of contributors to the project, and 2) that AK Press (in conjunction with the Institute for Anarchist Studies) will publish Octavia’s Brood!
I finally saw X-Men: Days of Future Past at our local close-to-DVD-release cheap theater that we South Minneapolitans all love, The Riverview. I loved it. I knew a few of the main comics discrepancies beforehand, but they didn’t bother me. It was gripping, the effects were sick, and I for me personally, I’m not sure there’s a limit to great acting performances once Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender hit the screen in damn near everything they do. All of that said, once I was waiting for the credits and the usual Marvel post-flick teaser, I started thinking about something else: Ferguson, MO.
During an interview in the 1980s, Black female science fiction writer Octavia Butler was asked her how it felt to be THE Black female science fiction writer. And Octavia replied she never wanted that title. She said she wanted to be one of hundreds of Black female sci-fi writers. She said she wanted thousands of folks writing sci-fi and writing themselves into the future.
My co-editor Adrienne Maree Brown and I didn’t even know explicitly we were answering the call Octavia laid down when we started working together on Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements, an anthology of radical (or what we call visionary) science fiction by organizers, activists and those immersed in social change. We just knew we felt the power, the potential and the necessity of visionary science fiction.
I have only met Dominic Newsome through letters. This is because Dominic is incarcerated in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, in the same institution political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal called “a bright shining hell.”
We became acquainted when I lived in Philadelphia and was working with the Human Rights Coalition, an organization of prisoners’ families. We received dozens of letters each week from people, mostly Black men, behind prison walls. They asked for legal referrals, told us of atrocities being committed by guards, of legal railroading. Some just wanted to connect with people on the outside — ours were the only letters they received.
It was in this that I got to know Dominic. I met him through his letters, but I came to know Dominic through his art. The first drawing he sent of me was Harriet Tubman. I pulled it from the manila envelope with his clear writing that grew like vines on the front. I could not believe the detail, the intricacy, the emotion he accomplished with what looked to me to be a pen and a regular sheet of paper.
I learned later it was not actually a pen — it was the inside of a pen, which is the only writing instrument prisoners in restricted housing are allowed (Mumia Abu-Jamal used that to write several books). Supposedly it is because the round casing of the pen could be used as a weapon. Given that prisoners in restricted housing are locked down 23 out of 24 hours a day, that they have no physical contact with anyone but armed guards, and that visits are conducted through thick plexiglass that distorts the faces of loved ones, it seems more an attempt to suffocate the creative fire of these overwhelming Black and Brown folks.
