Journal | Il Tolomeo
Monographic journal issue | 23 | 2021
Research Article | Nnedi Okorafor: Trajectories of an African Futurism

Nnedi Okorafor: Trajectories of an African Futurism

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the new category of Africanfuturism coined by the Nigerian American writer (or Naijamerican, as she defines herself) Nnedi Okorafor in 2019, after years of questions about the limits that the category of Afrofuturism has put over the receptions of her works. Okorafor felt the urgency to open this new horizon to better insist on the importance of stories and narratives profoundly rooted in the African continent, thus abandoning the Western models and canons of science fiction and creating new ways of looking towards the far future. Through the analysis of Okorafor’s novels (Who Fears Death?, Lagoon and Binti), interviews and posts on her blog, the article explores the potentialities of Okorafor’s speculative fiction to deal with technologies, traditions, cultures, social transformations, and how these issues inform a future Africa that could possibly be an entirely new world, in which the concept of ‘West’ and ‘colonialism’ do not have any meaning.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: Aug. 3, 2021 | Accepted: Oct. 29, 2021 | Published Dec. 20, 2021 | Language: it

Keywords Nnedi Okorafor • Africanfuturism • Visions of the future • Postcolonial science fiction • Speculative fiction

Copyright © 2021 Teresa Colliva. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/Tol/2499-5975/2021/23/022


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