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Octavia’s Brood: Radical Queer Futurity and the Dismantling of Oppressive Systems of Oppression

I know I’m not alone in stating that I loved all the short stories in this book, and I am also not alone in this being one of the first pieces of sci fi that I have actually read. I couldn’t pick a singular story to expand on, so I want to continue our class conversation from last week on how science fiction can be used in social justice movements.

To take the opening line of Octavia’s Brood, “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” (3).

As I mentioned in class, the utilization of science fiction as a means to imagine and create radical futures can be seen in multiple non-normative spaces. From punks, afrofuturism, cyborg theory and queer futurity all work to challenge the norm through praxis.

I immediately thought of Cathy Cohen’s piece “Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: The Potential of Queer Politics?” Wherein Cohen states: “I’m talking about a politics where the nonnormative and marginal position of punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens, for example, is the basis for progressive, transformative coalition work. Thus, if there is any truly radical potential to be found in the idea of queerness and the practice of queer politics, it would seem to be located in its ability to create a space in opposition to dominant norms, a space where transformational political work can begin” (Cohen, 438). And I think this captures the need of what Imarisha calls visionary fiction, because even within queer politics there is conforming to norms and similar hierarchies of power. To quote Imarisha visionary fiction, “…encompasses all of the fantastic, with the arc always bending toward justice. We believe this space is vital for any process of decolonization, because the decolonization of the imagination is the most dangerous and subversive form there is: for it is where all other forms of decolonization are born. Once the imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless” (Imarisha, 4).

Cherrie Moraga echoes these sentiments of needing to form a new movement beyond even normative activism in “Queer Aztlan: The Reformation of Chicano Tribe”.

Where she states, “’Queer Aztlan’ has been forming in my mind for over three years….[Ricardo Bracho and I] discussed the limitations of ‘Queer Nation’, whose leather-jacketed, shaved-headed white radicals and accompanying anglo-centricity ere an ‘alien-nation’ to most lesbians and gay men of color. We also spoke of Chicano Nationalism, which never accepted openly gay men and lesbians among its ranks” (Moraga, 225). This also strongly relates to BGD and the critique of “only white people are complex enough to be queer”. Pushing again beyond current activist spaces and theory wherein queer people of color are othered, erased or questioned. Moraga again aligns with the intent and force behind Octavia’s Brood as she writes, “As we are forced to struggle for out right to love free of disease and discrimination, “Aztlan” as our imagined homeland began to take on renewed importance. Without a dream of a free world, a free world will never be realized” (Moraga, 235).

Jose Esteban Munoz pushes this sentiment further in his book “Cruising Utopia”, he starts the Introduction by stating, “Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality. We have never been queer, yet queerness exists for us as an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future. The future is queerness’s domain…. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world” (Munoz, 1). I just want to take a minute to appreciate how beautifully worded this was, and I don’t know about you but Munoz’s work hits me emotionally every time.

And beyond the beautiful structure of these sentences, the ideas within them bring together all these works. It pushes us to reach for the potentiality of queerness and the positivity of the future. And I feel Octavia’s Brood really encompassed this call for queer futurity and queer utopia, all the stories showcases characters taking risks, imagining a different future and inspiring others to take action. It shows characters who might fail and those who don’t know the outcome of their actions—these are leaps of faith in hope of a brighter future for those who live life on the margins.

RR5 sav_blogs

Sources:

Octavia’s Brood

Cohen, Cathy. “Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?”

Moraga, Cherrie. “Queer Aztlan: the Re-formation of Chicano Tribe”

Munoz, Jose Esteban. “Cruising Utopia”.

Octavia's Brood

Though reading was one of my favorite pastimes as a child, I have in my adult life become someone who is “just not a reader.” I recognize the importance of reading, particularly as someone who likes to write, but have found myself choosing social events or physical activity over reading a book more often than not. In the particular case of science fiction, I haven’t even found myself interested in the show or film versions. Our recent reading has unexpectedly revived in me a desire to read, though, and particularly to read science fiction.

When Octavia’s Brood began with the quote, “All organizing is science fiction,” I was wary to continue. The book ended up sparking a curiosity about science fiction, however, I think because of the blatant connections it made between fictional stories and social justice, something I already have a passion about. The injustices in the stories mirrored injustices I’m fired up about in the world around me (gentrification, immigration, racism, etc.), and I found myself sucked into them.

Curious to understand more about science fiction and its development over time, I came across this amazing graphic.

Science fiction has long been a way for humans to escape reality, or to dream of other realities, and this is the way science fiction is important to activist work. Author Ursula LeGuin stated, in her speech at the National Book Awards, “Hard times are coming, when we’ll be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine real grounds for hope. We’ll need writers who can remember freedom – poets, visionaries – realists of a larger reality.” Writing, in LeGuin’s opinion, has the potential to serve as a catalyst for social change. It’s easy to grow accustomed to the machine of society, and to exist as a cog within it. Science fiction writers, though, dream of a different machine (or even a lack of machine), and urge readers to expand their own realms of possibility.

Octavia’s Brood has encouraged me to reconsider my feelings towards science fiction. The stories in the book depict how our society could function differently, and this dreaming is the first step towards social progress… it provides a vision. These stories allow us to imagine a future we want, and to consider how to work towards it. The depressing stories may be even more helpful, as they depict a future we want to avoid.

Resources:

Imarisha, W., Brown, A. M., & Thomas, S. R. (n.d.). Octavia's brood: Science fiction stories from social justice movements.

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards-speech

All the stories included in Octavia’s Brood was great but the one that stuck out to me the most is “The River”. This particular story kept me thinking about what would have happened if there would to be an ending. Or like many stories maybe there exist many alternative endings because the readers can create or their own ending. Perhaps Brown wanted us to be imaginative and come up with our ending that would seem to fit what have been presented to us. Or maybe there isn’t an ending at all because this isn’t the end it is only the beginning. In the book it says that the river symbolizes freedom but another thought also occurred to me the river is a part of nature. It represents calmness, peace, connection, history, and it gives a time frame. Although it is indeed very tranquil in many aspects it can also be extremely dangerous because it continues to push forward restricting backward movements from occurring or at least making it very difficult to do. However, the river to me also represents a flow of change and that changes are always happening therefore many things should move forward. You cannot go back to a time that once was even though the river may carry evidence of many historical events it can never stay the same because it is frequently changing.

Every time we read a book I keep going back to Black Girl Dangerous. That in reality we people of color aren’t the monsters we are described to be, and we may all be like the river wanting changes and time to go forward not go back to a history that suppresses and oppresses people. Perhaps those who call others the devil is worse than the devil himself but still paints a beautiful image of themselves while crafting vicious and unhealthy images of others. Minorities who protest even if they have to do so in an irritating fashion it is awareness and attention that they sought after. To many institutionalized people we are still in the wrong though because for some reason these protests are not perceived like a river, peaceful and calm forcing for changes. Unfortunately, minorities protesting even if it is peaceful are often portrayed as “disruptive”, “violent”, and “unnecessary”. For the last decade America has been going to war, a war on humanity. This war is very real and in many cases unwanted, unneeded, and unacceptable yet it is being normalized and accepted by many people primarily white people. After going to the workshop for the Mayday Parade I was thinking to myself, if only peace was that easy to attain. In fact peace is easy to obtain being human is simple, doing YPAR type of work to reach an agreement isn’t hard. But the sad truth is many don’t want to see us united like the river.

So no matter how much we push and pull it doesn’t matter as long as there are those who are blind and neglectful uncaring of our positive goals and dreams, moving forward like the river is difficult and brutal. Many people are afraid but many people are also brave. We have LGBT advocates protesting all over the world, human rights activists screaming out equality at every event, so many people working for changes like the river. Many people assume that racism is only an issue that is persistent in America but I can guarantee that it is a global issue. “In a short introductory video the Understanding Race project from the American Anthropological Association says race is a powerful idea and an enduring concept, invented by society. It has also fostered inequality and discrimination for centuries, as well as influencing how we relate to other human beings” (Shah). A lot of community issues are not a one place-tailored problem. Similar conflicts exist everywhere in the world but we always wait until it IS US to act. Sometimes waiting does nothing and hoping someone will accept the burden of everyone is too risky. Fortunately, we still have many fighters out there who works hard to take back community facilities, parks, ideas, and rights. Which is wonderful but more people are needed to cultivate humanity. Look at the outrage and community supporters who came through after the Jamar Clark incident. It makes you question if it did not happen to us would we have cared as much? Is it a personal struggle or community struggle? I would argue that everything links back to being a community issue and not as personal as one may think.

Stories like those in Octavia’s Brood is creative yet empowering. It offers us different possibilities of our reality, push us to question how possible is it, and how we can connect it to our actual lives. We have a lot of young people looking up to us as role models. I believe young people should be well-disciplined but I also think that they should be given the opportunity to express themselves freely, to have a say in what they want to learn. They should not always be overshadowed by adults. Critical consciousness needs to be taught at an early age not realized too late. We want children to be more well-rounded than those before them but they cannot improve if we continue to give them barriers to prevent them from being better individuals than us. If education cannot be a democracy there is no point of being educated under such an one-person tailored system. If culture and society cannot be a democracy there is no point in preaching about it and not practicing it properly. I believe we are all in this together we can agree to disagree but let’s not make each other suffer just because we disagree with each other.

Kare Staff, K. (2016, April 4). Hayes speaks, group calls for reopening Jamar Clark case. KARE 11. Retrieved April 5, 2016, from http://www.kare11.com/news/local/groups-call-for-reopening-of-jamar-clark-case-special-prosecutor/119497197

Shah, A. (2010, August 08). Racism. Retrieved April 1, 2016, fromhttp://www.globalissues.org/article/165/racism

Environmental Justice is Human Justice

The power of Octavia’s Brood is twofold. Firstly, by having community members write and submit their own pieces the book serves as a representation of their unique and complex stories and truths. Second, the compellation of science fiction short stories allows the reader and writer to explore universes where their dreams become reality. By allowing these visions of a better future live, they encourage us, the reader, to work to make these visions come to fruition.

This book showcases the power of community much like Black Girl Dangerous, as well as many of the other texts we have read this semester. One of my favorite stories was “The River”, which tells the story of the angry Detroit River. The river fights against gentrification and the ways in which the city has been forgotten. The city, much like the people, has been left to face a demise not of their own making. Similarly, the stories of struggle and enslavement have been diminished in the dominant white narrative.

To me there is something extremely powerful about this return to nature. We can trace these sentiments back through colonial history. White settlers did not care for the land they stole. They merely profited off its fruits and when they were done stripping it barren they moved on towards the next patch of innocent land. Along with the death of these glorious landscapes came the death and destruction of the peoples living there. Their ancestry, history, and culture, was brutally cut down along with their lands.

I believe that environmental rights are human rights. The Earth has a right to live as much as we do. This is especially true for those who have been the shepherds of the land for centuries. I cannot presume to speak for these tribes, as I am not one of them. However, I do believe that in the hands of the greedy and the elite, the land will waste away. I believe that access to natural resources and homelands is a basic human right because what comes from the Earth is magical. In our modern world it is cheaper to buy soda and chips than it is to buy fresh produce. This system of keeping the poor for accessing fresh food is a way to strip them of their connection to the earth and makes sure they stay down.

The following is a basic breakdown of the importance of Environmental Justice in regards to the Human Rights Movement: http://www.triplepundit.com/special/skeo-environmental-justice/environmental-justice-infrastructure-development/

Redefining Discourse Surrounding Non/Fiction

I want to start off by proclaiming my love for Octavia's Brood. I have never really read science fiction nor have I been exposed to it in this form, but I do think that it has changed my perceptions on writing about social justice completely. I remember a conversation we had about this book the first day that we read it, and that stood out to me and really resonated with me. I wish I remembered who said this, but someone mentioned how writing fiction for social justice allows people who face oppression to imagine an alternate reality that is different from the one we all face. The conversation was then taken a step further that led to a discussion about how activism is imagining a reality different than the one that we currently live in. I want to take this a step further and complicate the nonfiction/fiction dichotomy, since I believe that that could be problematic to focus on. What is fiction? Is this binary not a perpetuation of ableist, neoliberal lies that perpetuate hegemonic ideals? This collection of science fiction social justice pieces should be added to the feminism anticanon of poetry, novels, and scholarly writing that work to dismantle systems of power that oppress people as well as define what is non/fiction.

I want to first start with a conversation that is attempting to dismantle the notion of nonfiction as being rational, because it is deeply rooted in colonialist ideologies. In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Toward the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation An Argument,” an article by Sylvia Wynter that I read for another class, Wynter discusses the origins of Eurocentric human classification as being justified through having the rational and irrational subject. This was an ideology that Europeans used to justify the genocide and enslavement of black bodies. This idea has been reborn and reworked throughout history. Today, you can see a similar binary being played out in fictional and nonfictional writing. An example I can think of is a piece of nonfiction writing being a historical text about the states' founding fathers. However, we know that the stories being perpetuated in mainstream discourse are not fact, since they overshadow and leave out the histories of discrimination and hate that our founding fathers perpetuated. Is that then not nonfiction, but fiction? Is hegemonic society's nonfiction even considered nonfiction, since we have to be critical of everything that we read? I think that part of the struggle for a better society is knowing that we have to not only build new bodies of knowledge, but dismantle the ones that are already in place.

My next point deals with how we see and categorize alternate forms of knowing and writing. How is Octavia's Brood, a collection of science fiction short stories, different from poetry, novels or scholarly writing that also offer an alternative way of seeing the world? We discussed this in class, but I think it is necessary to remove our personal notions from what dominant society tells us about science fiction to see the real benefits of this form of social justice. Everyone finds solace and justice in their own way. We need to collectively imagine new realities. I included the Maya Angelou quote above to reiterate this point. I think that we need to think critically and absorb everything that we read as not just something we conceptually understand, but emotionally understand as well. To clarify, I am not insinuating that we assume we completely understand the struggle of these writers. For example, as a white person, I am not going to assume I understand what a black feminist writer has experienced. But I think that really reading and internalizing these experiences that we read about could lead to real solidarity.

I believe that we need to dismantle the non/fiction binary as well as make room for alternate ways of knowing and writing to bring an end to harmful systems of power and oppression. I just wonder what the next step would be, in this situation that I am bringing forth. I do not know if anyone has an answer, which could be a good thing.

Sources:

Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Toward the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation An Argument.” The New Centennial Review, Volume 3, Number 3, Fall 2003, pp. 257-337 (Article)

Designer Babies and Ableism

Though Octavia’s Brood was full of many amazing stories, there was one that stood out to me in particular. Hollow, written by Mia Mingus, is about a population of people with disabilities, called “Unperfects,” who were banished from Earth and sent to a planet called Hollow. The Unperfects end up building infrastructure and start living on their new planet even though the intention of the remaining population of Earth meant for them to die off. The reason that this story stuck with me is because I can see this scenario happening in our near future. With the invention of “designer babies,” parents can effectively pick and choose the genes that will go into their future child. The concept of designer babies is extremely problematic and ableist because as parents elect to design their babies, genes that express Down Syndrome or blindness, and many other traits, can be deemed as undesirable traits, and they will most likely be replaced with “good” and “better” genes. In an already ableist society, further pathologizing those with disabilities can lead to a terrifyingly discriminatory future.

In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVMfQNe7U7w) covering the topic of designer babies, one of the news reporters already uses ableist language to discuss genes that carry diseases, “Editing out a ‘bad’ gene and putting in a ‘good’ one.” Though one could argue that diseases are not inherently good, who is to say that someone with a particular disease is any more or less valuable than someone without that disease? As discussed in Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, operating under the medical model of disability is ableist and discriminatory. I truly hope that more choose to embrace the social model of disability so that our society does not end up like the society/societies in Hollow.

Sources Cited

Mingus, Mia. Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Ed. Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown. Oakland: AK, 2015. Print.

Erickson-Schroth, Laura. Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. Oxford UP, 2014. Print.

Sources:

Octavia’s Brood was by far the most interesting book we’ve read in class, if not the more entertaining of the literature in this course. Science fiction (sf) is a genre I never thought I liked. I thought that it was useless. I didn’t understand its purpose. I believed that sf was a genre for escapists. I was totally wrong in these kinds of young assessments. Thinking of sf as an escapist literature couldn’t be further from the truth. Sf is a totally engaging kind of literature. And the brand of sf in Octavia’s Brood purposefully engages with social and political issues relevant today in alternative and futuristic worlds. In most sf stories there are novums. Novums are a “fictional novelty (novum, innovation) validated both by being continuous with a body of already existing cognitions” (Suvin, 1978). In other words, something not yet tangible or necessarily real but are linked symbolically to something currently in existence. It was with this simple definition that sf totally changed for me. Everything about sf suddenly became more critical of the world.

One novum in the story Revolution Shuffle’s is the machinery that attracts the hoards of zombies away from the populated areas of privileged not zombie people. Obviously these kinds of machines do not actually exist, or do they? If that is this story’s novum, then in som way the machine absolutely already exists. The machine as a novum represents the power structures in place imprisoning and disenfranchising the same demographic of people as depicted in the story, people of color. Melzer (2005) would agree saying, “…Revolutionary technology, and [a] futuristic time frame allow [science fiction] to explore power relations in ways different from realistic fiction.” The systems that continuously disenfranchise minorities, like the prison system and political gerrymandering, leave minorities and their communities abandon. At the same time that these communities are abandoned they are imprisoned in them. These areas of the machine in Revolution Shuffle are literally internment camps. In the story, these machines areas required human work to maintain but it was a job that no one wanted. In the chaos of a zombie apocalypse, the privileged classes and the politicians convinced the public that black and brown people were the culprits: terrorists. The public was convinced that a group of people was responsible for the zombie apocalypse. It is in this tradition that Melzer would also argue that the sf genre has a tradition of touching on themes of colonialism and in both conservative and reactionary ways.

The main characters of Phi’s short story are both onlookers to a one of these machine areas. They are loading their guns with ammunition preparing to fight. Presumably they are about to liberate the people in the prison work camp It is interesting to not that one of these characters is Vietnamese American. The story definitely takes on the issues of internment camps of WWII. Interestingly, the two characters discuss where they are going to go when with the people they liberated from the camp. They mention the southwest the New Aztlan. The borderlands are marked by colonialism in America. An in this story it is an area that is reclaimed by Mexican and native communities of those areas. In the mention the character being Asian American and the new Aztlan, Phi is using her literature in a way Melzer (2005) describes as a “transgressive tool in the process of exploring political strategy.”

This story is definitely one of revolution from the colonialism of brown and black bodies and lands. The revolution requires a taking back and affirming the bodies that stand on the group. The machine should be destroyed; it’s a prison and not a camp of refuge. These characters are acting on survivalist strategy and at the same time resistance from the oppression they faced before a zombie apocalypse.

References

Darko, S. (1978). ON what is and is not an sf narration; With a list of 101 victorian books that should be excluded from sf bibliographies. Science Fiction Studies, 5(1).

Melzer, P. (2005). ‘Change my cultural “coloring” again’: anti-colonial identities in Octavia E. Butler’s feminist science fiction . International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics , 1 (3), 246-261.

Phi, B. (2015). Revolution Shuffle. In A. M. Brown, & W. Imarisha, Octavia's Brood (pp. 8-14). Oakland: AK Press.

Octavia's Brood as a model for YPAR?

I really appreciated the opportunity to read Octavia’s Brood. This was a great opportunity to engage in all the topics we’ve discussed so far in class but in a different way. It was like reading for pleasure, but each story carried such weight and significance. Reading these stories gave me new insight on the issue and the activism for each particular cause.

I really got to thinking about the writing experience for each story. How liberating, frustrating, cathartic, and exhausting it must have been to write. After reading 22XX: One-Shot, I got to thinking about our discussions on YPAR and how this book could be used as a model for a YPAR project. It might not seem exactly clear as to why I thought of this after reading this story, but let me explain. The narrator is a school kid, age not specified but I got the sense he was in high school, named Sasha Sangare. Many of his teachers and even his parents think he’s a good-for-nothing, terrible at school, and a bit of a mess-up. But, we learn that he is actually just the opposite. He has been working one-on-one with a teacher on his own research, which has included giving him the special ability to melt metal. Sasha and his friend, Herb, are pursued by the strict cyborg officers until they make their escape with their professor.

Why did this make me think of YPAR? I don’t know the person who wrote this story or why they wrote it. However, I feel that it shows some of the effects of YPAR. Sasha is a youth. Check. Often, YPAR projects are done with groups of students that are dismissed by structures. In the story, no one thinks Sasha is all that smart. So, check. YPAR projects can involve adult leaders who facilitate growth and discovery. Sasha’s professor facilitates his own research. Check. YPAR projects are empowering for their participants. Sasha is able to melt metal and also escape as a result of his work with his professor. Check. Sasha’s story is not a YPAR project, but it got me thinking about how writing a book like this could be a YPAR project. It is not a stretch to see that youth’s stories can be heard.

I recently read a study in which the researchers worked with a marginalized group of students, English language learners, on digital storytelling projects. They chose this project because they wanted to tap into the students’ creative potential to help them learn new concepts despite the literacy barrier. The students worked together to make their own digital stories using “tabletop video.” This was a longer project, spanning several weeks, as the students wrote the script, rehearsed the scenes, shot the video, and then edited the final product. The researchers found that the students actually learned better when they had control over the learning process and were able to express themselves creatively.

This study shows that writing a book like this as a YPAR project is not unattainable or unrealistic. In fact, it could be cathartic and actually improve students’ educational experiences. Instead of reading other texts and writing analysis papers every time, students could work together to express themselves, their frustrations, and their dreams in fiction. They would be able to confront the problems they face in their own lives in a creative way and in a way they may never have been encouraged to pursue before. If anyone knows of book writing as a YPAR project, let me know. I would love to see the effects of this strategy on youth and what they produce. I think it could be very inspiring.

-aspiringsparkplug

Sources

Brick Maier, Robert and Mercedes Fisher. “Strategies for Digital Storytelling via Tabletop

Video: Building Decision Making Skills in Middle School Students in Marginalized

Communities”. Journal of Educational Technology Systems. Vol. 35, No. 2. 2006. 175-

192.

Wilson, Jelani. “22XX: One-Shot”. Octavia’s Brood. Ed. Brown, Adrienne Maree and Walidah

Imarisha. AK Press. 2015. 187-196.

How fiction is and isn't real

What makes a fiction acceptable and understandable to readers is the moment where it connects with reality. In other words, fiction is a reasonable story based on reality, and the “choice” of reality has a key influence on how the story turns out. In Octavia’s Brood, nothing is real, yet everything is real. Envisioning what the future is like is a classic plot in fiction novels, and thousands of fictions already constructed thousands of future for us. In this sense, any fiction talking about disaster in human society is an expanding of current social issues: “where will we be” is depends on “where are we at”, and this is why I think everything in fiction is real. For example, the Octavia’s Brood made a fabulous conversation about social justice in the future based on issues today. This is why I also think everything in fiction isn’t real: except the “fiction” side of it, if there is no more “future” been produced, will we still need to record and envision?

By saying no more “future”, I’m not saying the “world will be destroyed”. Future won’t exist without concepts of “now” and “history”. When we talk about “in history” or “in the future”, we are not simply talking about the “time”. We are talking about what’s going on inside the human society. Similarly, when we read fictions, like Octavia’s Brood, “future” is an assumption about entities/power distribution in the human society. Envisioning future and look back history shares one similarity: they all acknowledge competitions/interactions between different entities. If the world is universally same, and no confliction between entities would happen, we would have no more “future” to be recorded. For example, we can write a book describe what’s going on in a painting (all those colors and lines), but we can’t write a book to describe a straight line.

Here, I would like to use a quote from Francis Fukuyama: “Both Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human societies was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited an "end of history": for Hegel this was the liberal state, while for Marx it was a communist society. This did not mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, and death would end, that important events would no longer happen, or that newspapers reporting them would cease to be published. It meant, rather, that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled.”

As long as we are still writing/reading fictions, we are still envision the diverse in our society. We still know the human society will produce history.

Reference:http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/32633.Francis_Fukuyama

http://www.strangehorizons.com/reviews/2015/11/octavias_brood_.shtml

Diversity in science fiction

Although many of the stories in Octavia’s Brood were interesting in their own right, what was the most compelling about this anthology to me was the rationale behind its composition. The connection between activism as science fiction, because both involve imagining a world where things are better, or at least different, along with Walidah Imarisha’a assertion that the writers involved in Octavia’s Brood “want organizers and movement builders to be able to claim the vast space of possibility…Using their everyday realities and experiences of changing the world, they can form the foundation for the fantastic and, we hope, build a foundation where the fantastic liberates the mundane” (3). Part of what was so fantastic about this collection of science fiction stories is that it was built around Octavia E. Butler’s legacy, which is a departure from the larger tradition of science fiction writing, which focuses largely on white, cisgender, straight men in fantastical situations. In line with recent conversations about how white mainstream media is, there have been continued conversations about “diversity” in science fiction.

This article from WIRED UK focuses on the furor behind the nominations of the 2015 Hugo Awards, which are prestigious, fan-nominated awards for science fiction writing. Two online factions calling themselves the “Sad Puppies” and the “Rabid Puppies” created voting blocs for the awards that nominated primarily white men for the Hugo Awards, because they were “angered by the increasingly multicultural make-up of Hugo winners—books featuring women, gay and lesbian characters, and people and aliens of every color.”

Brad Torgersen, one of the leaders of the Sad Puppies voting bloc movement, says, "When people go on about how we're anti-diversity, I'm like: no. All we're saying is storytelling ought to come first." The implication being here that liberal science fiction fans would vote for stories because they champion a particular kind of diversity rather than focusing on the plot of the story, as if a fan would vote for a story with a shoddy plot just because it featured a “diverse” character. This ignores what I saw represented largely in Octavia’s Brood—that oftentimes, the representation within the story is what makes it good. Being a science fiction fan who is not usually represented in the stories they read can be difficult, and sometimes seeing someone like themselves in a piece of media that they enjoy can change their perceptions of themselves. Later in the same article, WIRED UK talks to fantasy writer NK Jemisin, who talks about the pleasant shock she experienced when she discovered that the protagonist of Dawn by Octavia Butler was Black, since she had never read another novel with a protagonist who looked like her. She echoes the sentiment heard in Octavia’s Brood, saying "Science fiction isn't the literature of the future. It's the literature of the present, viewing the future as allegory."

Science fiction seems like a genre that was made for people who suffer oppression in society. Science fiction universalizes problems that happen within human society, often making them seem more approachable or less harrowing by recontextualizing them—for example, the plot of X-Men mirroring discussion of the 1960s American Civil Rights movement—which is why it seems strange that the face of science fiction has evolved to be that of a white man.

The Bleak as Hope: Sci-Fi, Revolution (and Detroit)

As a long-time self-proclaimed dissident of science-fiction and fantasy in general, the book Octavia’s Brood blew me away. I’ll say it: I’ve never seen Lord or the Rings; I care nothing for Harry Potter , The Hunger Games or Star Trek. I haven’t seen the movies, read the books, and I probably never will. I’ll fully emerge myself in historical fiction, biographies, radical rhetoric, comedy and more. I don’t touch sci-fi or fantasy.

Then Octavia’s Brood came along. Discussions we had in class around the concept of activism and movement building as science-fiction have really stuck with me, ruminating and running around in my head. Sci-fi and fantasy become a vehicle for dreaming, envisioning and illustrating a post-revolutionary world. What a bold concept! I’m certain that at least half of the titles I listed above are staged similarly- but with Octavia’s Brood- the idea of authors of color sharing radical sci-fi stories based in social justice movements was a concept I have naively never considered. Mind Blown.

The first line of the “Introduction” in Octavia’s Brood, co-editor Walidah Imarisha states “whenever we try and envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction.” (P. 3). The concept of speculative fiction demonstrates hope. Bleakness as hope. The unknown as hope.

Certain stories stayed in brain for days. “Runway Blackout” shared a powerful message of activism as legacy. Individuals can take huge risks, mobilize others within a movement, and end up alienating themselves in the end. However, their bold acts push toward justice and revolution, even if they won’t personally see the results in their lifetime. That’s a message that all activists need to carry in their back pocket when results aren’t immediate and the process is exhausting and tedious.

The chapter “Kafka’s Last Laugh” illustrated the power of individuals against the terror of the prison industrial complex and corporations. One incarcerated individual found a crack in the powerful, oppressive system, and saw the possibility in influencing others to help her dismantle it. This is hope in the bleak. This character also reminded us that laughter as a tool for self-preservation in the long, tedious process of movement-building is critical and powerful.

The story written by co-editor Adrienne Maree Brown entitled “The River” was a terrifying modern-day reality Ode-to-Detroit, in which the Detroit River delivered justice to problematic politicians and gentrifying hipsters. Visiting Brooklyn a few summers back, friends had warned me of a mini Hipster exodus from Brooklyn to Detroit. They spoke of privileged white hipsters purchasing entire city blocks together. Talk about science-fiction! I was shocked. It was modern-day colonization. As an “urban studies” geek, I began digging through articles about the gentrification of post-bankruptcy Detroit, and it truly seemed liked fantasy. In fact, I assumed some of the articles were satire, a la “The Onion” style media. Some were (and here’s a great example here) as extreme as the show Portlandia in satirizing privileged white hipster culture taking over Detroit. This satire is a form of science-fiction to a degree, because the caricature is so extreme, it seems unreal. But it’s not. The actual outreach campaigns targeted at white entrepreneurs and artists and it’s concurrent gentrification are rampant. Is this post-apocalyptic Detroit? Is this sci-fi or reality?

In a 2013 article that highlights Detroit’s new opportunistic entrepreneur, “who have descended on the city in the last few years, as white, which heightens the undercurrent of racial tension”. In that particular year, Detroit was 83% African-American. "To some people who have been here the whole time, it feels like a takeover, not a renaissance.“ says Carla Walker-Miller, a prominent African-American CEO from Detroit.

This is an alternate reality for Detroit, but not a good one for black folks who have lived there for decades. The prospect of the Detroit River serving justice to reverse this gentrification trend is a great concept for science-fiction. In class we spoke of colonization being science-fiction and fantasy, and this is a modern-day example.

In Octavia’s Brood’s “Outro”, Adrienne Maree Brown calls science fiction “ ‘an exploring ground’ as it gives us the opportunity to play with different outcomes and strategies before we have to deal with the real-world costs” (P. 279). When waging bets against “the unknown” seems more (or less) frightening than existing in the status quo, we can dream within the broad frame of science-fiction to imagine and strategize for what “it could be”.

The transformation could be terrifying OR incredible. So many people fear revolution because it shakes the status quo so hard, no one knows where the pieces will land. Sci-fi embodies this alternate reality in post-revolution society.

Imarisha, W. & Brown, A. M. (2015) Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Oakland, CA: AK Press.

“Orbit Staff”. (12 Aug 2015). Major Cities Unloading Undesirable Hipsters in Detroit. The Detroit Metro Times, Retrieved from   http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/major-cities-unloading-undesirable-hipsters-in-detroit/Content?oid=2362542

Salter, C. (13 Apr 2013). How A Young Community Of Entrepreneurs Is Rebuilding Detroit. The Fast Company, Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/3007840/creative-conversations/how-young-community-entrepreneurs-rebuilding-detroit

Science fiction is like, so white, so straight and so hetero- and cis-normative. It’s honestly super creepy that so many acclaimed author’s visions of the future are do not include any women, any queer people, or any people of color. Frankenstein, widely considered the first science fiction novel, reimagines white men reincarnating white men, with the only women in sight tragic victims of violence. Rossum’s Universal Robots, the play that coined the term “robot,” too, features only white men and one woman. Instead of including people of color, it’s really common-- really, really common-- to have fantasy races (ie aliens) stand in instead (Avatar). Science fiction itself is often read as a white genre, with contributions of people of color erased (here’s a great piece by Samuel R. Delany about why he isn’t the first Black science fiction writer). In a few words, horrors in science fiction (government/military exploitation, enslavement by alien races, etc) is often themed around “what if this happened to white people too???” A choice quotes from this great blog about the overwhelming whiteness of Battlestar Galactica:

I think the backstory is that Earth was the home colony that people flew away from millennia ago. Apparently only white people were smart enough to build spaceships to fly away from earth and took along a few darkies so that they could create some ‘exotic’ babies every now and then. Or maybe SciFi channel just sucks ass. I think that might be the case.

Octavia’s Brood not only centers and normalizes queer people of color, but i reimagines futures where they are praised, centered in society as public figures, romanticized, and play hero roles usually reserved for angsty white dudes. I would argue that it’s about a thousand times more creative because the authors already know how to write about and consider race and gender; they don’t need to replay old tropes and stereotypes. Instead, they write about white supremacy and cis/hetero-normativity, write themselves hopefully within systems of oppression in ways that are complicated and idealistic (like the superhero story). They’re actually interesting. Like Black Girl Dangerous, many of them are their own love letters to QTPOC. They're fucking fun and hopeful and good; they vibrant and serious without being full of the bleak angst that's saturated the genre for so long.

Bittersweet, add frustration and hopefulness

Octavia’s Brood goes above and beyond with the integration of creative writing, story telling and a blending twist of social justice engagement. The writers expand our minds with activism insights and science fiction in the sense of popular culture. I love their terminology of visionary fiction as a sort of experimental playground where all ideas are valid, and although fictionalized they could be nearby realities of change.

Similarly to the Trans Bodies, Trans Lives text, they both offer insight that gives hopefulness and expands imagination for future possibilities of beautiful movements. The use of science fiction is really interesting and artistic because it opens up a new realm of imagination and thinkers to “go outside the box” for creating new ways to make the necessary changes. From a lot of the stories, I got out themes of exposing racism, colonization, acceptance and love, but these authors push us to go beyond contemporary thought patterns. Activism work is so difficult and draining that the necessity of creativity can be such a lifeline to continue. Savonne Anderson wrote a blog titled “Radical imagination is a necessary, sustaining force of black activism.” She talks a lot about this concept of dreaming and imagining beyond what is directly in front of us because this creative thinking not only helps us be hopeful, but can turn into realities. The power of collective dreaming can be associated to Octavia’s Brood because that really is what this is. By submerging ourselves within the visionary fiction we are using the power of our minds to be expanded together, and in turn there is like a cycle of activism self-care occurring. For weeks now many of us in the class have been seeking out positivity and hopefulness among so many disheartening images and trends in U.S. life and accepted culture. In a beautiful way this feels like we are passing along a more ingrained hopefulness to peers, our future generations, and ourselves that change is possible!

With that being said, science fiction can also be frustrating for those of us who get caught up in reality and aren’t able to expand that. I became frustrated when my mind couldn’t grapple with the content and sticking points of each short piece. They are complex and abstract, and I found my mind constantly begging to see the author’s train of thought in their exact way. As a first time science fiction reader, I have learned that is exactly the point. It is creative and there aren’t always exact pinpointed or universal interpretations. Anderson also writes in her blog about dreaming never to be seen as too big or distant and not to let others lack of understanding to prevent this. That is crucial to internalize.

“Star Wars and the American Imagination” is my favorite piece because of the cultural comparison, my own ability to empathize with the author and the insight of the American perspective. It is interesting how Americans relate to various cultural plots and stories, imagining themselves usually as the protagonist. I love how this author points out Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as one creature in unison. The U.S. contains the “rebels” and the “Empire.” Being able to grapple with both major institutions and seeking revelation within and between both is powerful when it comes to creative thinking for social justice. Another important theme I pulled from this that seems to make or break individual activism in many situations is positionality. With many current large movements going on like the queer movement and black lives matter, positionality of the individual has implications whether it is positive or negative. This piece explicitly analyzes the United States’ perspective of their own positionality.

1. Octavia’s Brood edited by Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha

2. Savonne Anderson, “Radical imagination is a necessary, sustaining force of black activism.” http://mashable.com/2016/02/28/black-activism-radical-imagination/#5ZQT52bcykq5

Emergent Strategies, Organizing, and Octavia’s Brood

In Octavia’s Brood, a tribute to Octavia Butler and her work, activists imagine new worlds to warn us about the racism, environmental degradation, and sexism of our own. I am not a science-fiction reader. I rarely read any kind of fiction. I do not feel the transformative effects of being called into a different world. But that call is the power of fiction, and why so many people enjoy reading it. The cult followings and fan-fictions of some works evince the power of this interpellation. Indeed, the existence of this anthology, a love letter to Butler, show the influence of fiction and its writers. Fiction imagines new worlds to create publics in the present world.

Social justice-inspired fiction is its own call to action. For example, the story “Kafka’s Last Laugh” imagines New York in the future at the arrest of a protester. Police in riot gear quash protests and imprison the Resister, using mind control chemicals to re-socialize her into a normative capitalist consumer. However, she learns that laughter undoes the chemical’s mind control effects, and her laughter spreads. This work calls into question the neoliberal consumerist notion of citizenship, as rehabilitation into “proper” consumer is the state’s punishment for her. It draws attention to union busting and the vulnerability of low wage laborers, as the “short-lived backlash” to the prison program “by those who were employed by these retailers … was drowned out rather quickly” (Vagabond 182). Challenging the political economy, this story’s moral offers social justice groups a way forward: “…laughter at the absurdity of it all brought the mad reckless optimism every revolution needs …. Laughter was the mean by why everything could change” (Vagabond 186). Humor keeps social justice alive, because it resists the depressing circumstances of the present. Humor breeds optimism and the will to keep going. “Kafka’s Last Laugh” teaches us joy is resistance, especially as the system of power obscures its own absurdity and dissonance. Those who laugh at the story accept this interpellation.

I may not have enjoyed reading Octavia’s Brood, but I did find myself humming a different fiction’s interpellation. The old union song “Solidarity Forever” discusses many of the same issues as Octavia’s Brood. “Solidarity Forever” calls on workers to organize, because

When the union's inspiration through the workers' blood shall run There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one For the Union makes us strong

The union brings strength to the worker, who cannot challenge the capitalist system alone. Unionization is itself an emergent strategy, because it grows on the ground in response to its environment, “from a series of relatively simple interactions” (brown 280). The song calls a public to action, but it offers no guidelines on how. Rather, unionization is a process of elimination: “Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?” Unionization is messy, but the process creates hope. The song’s line “We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old” occupied my mind more than any other as I read Octavia’s Brood. The writers in Octavia’s Brood too strove to build “a new world from the ashes of the old” through laughter, as in “Kafka’s Last Laugh,” but also armed resistance, escape, and love.

In a literal reading, “from the ashes of the old” also speaks to a broader goal for emergent strategies. brown writes, “one aspect of emergent strategy is that there is no waste – we are encouraged to see everything as a resource” (280). The ashes of the old word become the resources on which the new world will be built. The often-painful process of creating can too be a resource. Throughout the semester, we have talked about the value of The Process, the learning involved along the path. Collaborative learning has taken precedence – we work in groups to grapple with multi-vocal texts. We learn from The Process, a pedagogical emergent strategy. But this Process also gives us the privilege of knowledge. How do we teach others what we have learned? If The Process matters, how do we carry this knowledge to others without speaking down to them, reinscribing the power structures that The Process warns us against? How do we continue to collaborate, especially as we confront people deeply invested in their own privilege who have not had the experience of The Process?

~CommonHouseholdTabby

Works Cited

Brown, adrienne marie. "Outro." Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Ed. adriennce maree brown and Walidah Imarisha. Oakland: AK Press, 2015. 278-281.

Pete Seeger. “Solidarity Forever.” Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube, 2. Dec 2010. 7. April 2016.

Vagabond. "Kafka’s Last Laugh." Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Ed. adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha. Oakland: AK Press, 2015. 177-186.

READING AS RESISTANCE

Women’s writing, sci-fiction writing both fuck with the norm, they are both resistance to order, to power, and to who creates truth. Literature in one form or another has always had symbolic or proactive resistance. It creates knowers who are ready, who are questioning, who are angry. Octavia’s brood as a form of resistance counters claims on who can be the knower, on cultural sexism that says women can’t do fiction, that women can’t do science let alone science fiction. I feel that writing and literature are a great form of consciousness and rebellion. It allows for growth and gives you room to bleed your rage, your identity, your struggles and ultimately can lead to dreams of liberation.

I look back to the first text that really made me look deeper into the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was that text for me. On the surface level it appears a story about a woman on bed rest who is losing her mind. With a critical analysis grounded in feminist theory we see that Gilman is fighting and conscious raising about a specific societal issue facing women of the middle and upper class, white of course. She is talking about female invalidism. Doctors pathologized middle class white women as needing extra rest, being prone to hysterics, and the list goes on. Women were not supposed to expend energy on tasks other than those proper to their gender roles (breeding and bible reading).

John, the female protagonists husband and doctor state “with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous reck like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency”. To a dominant body, this statement would align with the sentiments of the time. But as feminist and resistant minds, we see this as a mockery. It is not the cause of the protagonist’s disillusionment, it is the source of comfort and sanity from the insanity of male patriarchy. Therefore, for women like Perkins Gilman reading, writing, and the attainment and disbersment of knowledge through these avenues was crucial to her survival and was resistance. “Octavia’s Brood” comes down the line from “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The stories contained in it deny ideologies of knowing, of linear time, of correct formatting and story lines. Within the pages is a call to question, resistance, and the possibility to form our own stories that go off the paper.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. Milano: La Tartaruga, 1996. Print.

Imarisha, Walidah, and Adrienne Maree Brown. Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. Oakland: AK, 2015. Print.

Reclaiming Vietnamese American Identity

In some ways, I was extremely glad to see that a poem written by an Asian American artist, a local one even, was in Octavia’s Brood. I was first exposed to Bao Phi during my PSEO year here at the U – taking Creative Writing where the class brings in different artists to showcase different areas of writing. Phi was the only Asian American artist to be featured in the semester-long class; however his poems and his character exposed me to some form of my identity. Never was I conscious about Asian Americanness until I had met Phi. Til this day, he remains one my favorite Asian American artists who do great activist work not only through art, but also through other forms of activism.

Phi’s story “Revolution Shuffle” was a very inspiring one. It focused on two Vietnamese Americans attempting to free their fellow Asian Americans and people of color from the internment camps that the remaining White Americans put them in. While the two ethnic identities of these two individuals were not disclosed, the use of “pho,” a Vietnamese broth was used to describe part of their identities that they continued to hold onto. The female character uses this to describe her identity as she says, “Certainly wasn’t as good as my mom’s, that’s for sure,” (Phi, 7). In the past, this food had belonged not only to her as an identity but to relate back to her family history.

It was US firepower, not North Vietnamese troops, that turned so much of the South Vietnamese country side red with blood.

The use of having two Vietnamese Americans as the main characters is an extremely important part of the story. Historically, the North Vietnamese communists have been portrayed as the enemy of the Vietnam War. In no way was communism portrayed in a positive light for Americans. The idea of overthrowing the imperialist power was something that was just not done. The North, portrayed as communists and enemies, while the South, being portrayed as victims and allies, were the only story that was visible in American headlines. Stuart Herrington, a former US Army officer, even goes to say, “The South Vietnamese population had ample reason to fear the Vietnamese communists. The communists’ conduct throughout the course of the war had been violent and unforgiving,” (Turse, 23). Til this day, communism has been portrayed as a negative politics that would make one be sided with the enemy if they believed in it.

However, regardless of if one belonged to the South or the North, one was Vietnamese. Through “Revolution Shuffe,” Phi paints the idea that Vietnamese Americans can be the heroes, can hold positive images in society as well. Phi’s short story gives Vietnamese Americans empowerment and agency to be proud of their identity as Vietnamese. In many ways, the story was created to build a sense of visibility for Asian and Vietnamese Americans.

Works Cited.

Phi, Bao. “Revolution Shuffle,” in Octavia’s Brood. Ed. Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah

Imarisha. Oakland: AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist Studies, 2015. 7-14. Print.

Turse, Nick. “Getting the Vietnam War Wrong.” in The Nation. New York: Nation Company

L.P., 2015. 22-24.

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