We Need Diverse Books- AP Lit Edition: Afrofuturism
Help me give my students novels that will expand the diversity of our selections and open the portal to Afrofuturism with powerful titles by Octavia Butler, N.K. Jemisin, Colson Whitehead, and Janelle Monae.
At the end of the last day of our class in June, a student approached me to express appreciation for how much he learned and shared how deeply Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man resonated with him–he had never read anything like it. His words led me to create a project exploring Afrofuturism so that I can not only expand my classroom library but intentionally historicize the texts. In her piece “AFROFUTURISM: ITS ORIGINS, PRESENT, AND FUTURE,” Ericka Hardison explains, “The Harlem Renaissance was an Afrofuturistic movement. The creation of jazz, hip-hop, punk and funk are all spectrums of how Afrofuturism uses sounds to reflect the connections between our ancestors and the future.”
Imagine students’ enthusiasm to discover the historical roots and origins of Black Speculative Fiction and Afrofuturism–in literature, art and music!
Clearly, choice matters--for the individual student and the classroom as a whole. As their AP Literature teacher, it is my responsibility to empower students to select texts that they want to read and to create space for them to share what resonates with them. Where do they see beauty and truth in the text?
Reading imaginative literature by diverse authors serves as a portal through which students can realize new possibilities, perspectives, and the power of authoring their futures.
As Ericka Hardison asserts, “There’s room in publishing and the literary world for Afrofuturism, Astro-Blackness, and any other genre Black people on this planet want to create.”
More than half of students from low‑income households
Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more
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