Issue 2 (2011): Sexing the Colorlines: Black Sexualities, Popular Culture, and Cultural Production





" Science fiction is not about the problems of the world, but also about solving the problems of the world. "

-Octavia Butler



Key term(s):

Overview:









She argues:

The black female body in these books demonstrates a power that allows for personal explorations of pleasure and pain and the possibilities for socio-political change within the black community.

Tananarive Due and L.A. Banks rewrite and revamp history by focusing on black women's bodies as sites of reality-changing power, and that their characters occupy multiple positions as complexly constructed lovers, and as both protector and protected. Speculative fiction allows Banks and Due to explore the complexities of their female protagonists in a lengthy format, a series of written novels.

Both writers use the realm of horror fiction to reimagine and complicate previous caricatures of the black woman and her body.

Fictional texts used as examples:





Character Focus:

Banks and Due illustrate how the growth of the personal self aids the political, for it is only when their characters come into their own as women/sisters/daughters/wives/mothers/lovers that make up their multi-faceted identities that they truly begin to aid the community at large.

Black Female Sexuality:

Black female sexuality has rarely been treated with nuance; there has been a history of either extreme exaggeration as an excuse for the hegemonic horror perpetuated since slavery or a punishing silence supported by the black middle class.

embrace their sensuality as they explore their sexual agency as lovers in complicated, heterosexual relationships.

Each writer also places a specific focus on the importance of their lead female characters' body, revisiting a historic lack of agency possessed by black women as their bodies were continuously defined as non-entities.

Discussion Questions:

How can vampire mythology be used as a tool for complex exploration of sexual identity?

Can historic policies about Black women's bodies and sexual identity be completely transgressed in speculative fiction? In what ways?

What are, if any, the differences in sexual exploration between Jessica Jacobs-Wolde and Damali Richards that could be argued to have problematic features within the structure of their characterization?

Additional Resources:

- operates as a catchall term for science fiction and fantasy fiction that includes such themes as horror, supernatural, apocalyptic, and dystopian/utopian fictionBrooks looks at the vampiric themes in the fictional works of two authors:Tananarive Due:CharacterJessica Jacobs-WoldeL.A. Banks:seriesCharacter: Damali Richards- Wrestling with the balance of personal and community growth:Historical context - "Banks and Due in prose perform a "Due's" of her identityBank's" as well as unrestrainedBoth: "Evelynn Hammonds. "Black (W)Holes and the Geometry of Black Female Sexuality."9.3 (1994): 31-45. Print.bell hooks. "The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.". Ed. Thornham, Sue. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Print.Gwendolyn D. Pough and Yolanda Hood. "Speculative Black Women: Magic, Fantasy, and the Supernatural."6.1 (2005): ix. Print.