Abstract
Stanley proposes that an Afrofuturistic reading of George S. Schuyler’s Black No More and Octavia E. Butler’s “The Book of Martha” expand the canon of literary utopias that consider race and other marginalized positions as central to their construction. Both Schuyler’s and Butler’s experience with and understanding of race invite discussions of literary utopias as an exercise that questions rather than reaches a destination. They are less concerned about inventing utopia and more about participating in a process for writing utopia that is inclusive and diverse. Afrofuturism, in its expression as a reading practice, then becomes a method for rereading these texts to discover how they are experiments in utopia.
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Stanley, T.L. (2019). Re-Read and Recover: Afrofuturism as a Reading Practice in George S. Schuyler’s Black No More and Octavia E. Butler’s “The Book of Martha”. In: Ventura, P., Chan, E. (eds) Race and Utopian Desire in American Literature and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19470-3_13
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