My fellow Afrofuturists Tara Christina, Dera R. Williams, and Shannon Holbrook are not sure what an Afrofuturist cookbook looks like; however, they are sure of the intersection of food, memory, ancestry, and story. Still, knowing these talented women, their gifts for storytelling and their knowledge of food and their ability to create community wherever they go, I tried (the Italian Futurists created a cookbook–we Afrofuturists can cook too). But Tara Christina, Dera, and Shannon show us how African
Diaspora-inspired cooking preserves memory and vital connection. We see food representing the delicious complexities of culture: Toni Morrison’s mysteriously burned biscuits, Octavia Butler’s vegetable gardens. (Wouldn’t an Afrofuturist cookbook allow us to live the dream? No one’s feeling it
but it could work.)
Shannon Harris says ???goodbye??? to the Evangelical purity culture
She thinks back wisfully on the woman she never became. The Woman They Wanted tells the story of a girl with musical ability who thought…