The empowered female character in the science fiction of black women writers

Abstract

Black women writers are deemed as newcomers to the realm of science fiction since this genre is historically associated with white male writers. In an alternative future, Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor, and Sherri L. Smith depict the interlocking elements of oppression, such as race, gender, and class. Therefore, I argue that, although white male writers have had their deep influence on science fiction throughout history, the African American and Caribbean women authors, that I have chosen in this study, subvert the interlocking elements of oppression, such as racism, sexism, and classism; they represent empowered Afrofuturist protagonists through their novels: Fledgling, Midnight Robber, the Binti trilogy, and Orleans. The aim of this thesis is to study black feminist science fiction and its relationship to issues that affect the lives of black women in twenty-first century America. In this thesis, I use black feminism, Afrofuturism, and the “Cyborg Manifesto” as theoret ical frameworks to analyze the aforementioned novels. The female protagonists, Shori Matthews, Tan Tan, Binti, and Fen de la Guerre use their own strategies to cope with oppression and marginalization, and they struggle in a male dominated world to become strong women. Consequently, Butler, Hopkinson, Okorafor, and Smith succeed in creating utopian societies that challenge the notions of racism, sexism, and classism in their imagined Afrofuturist worlds