"Examines how authors of color-including Tomi Adeyemi, R. F. Kuang, and Marlon James-write against white-dominated, Eurocentric fantasy narratives to counteract Christian and colonial tropes and offer alternate versions of morality, race, gender, and sexuality"-- Provided by publisher.
Examines how authors of color, in writing against white-dominated, Eurocentric fantasy narratives, counteract Christian and colonial tropes and offer alternate versions of morality, race, gender, and sexuality.
In Dispelling Fantasies, Joy Sanchez-Taylor examines how authors of color, such as R. F. Kuang, N. K. Jemisin, Nnedi Okorafor, Tomi Adeyemi, Tasha Suri, Aiden Thomas, Nghi Vo, and Marlon James, among others, offer critical counterpoints to the history of white-dominated, Eurocentric fantasy. The traditional fantasy that these authors are writing against reinforces Christian virtues and colonial, white supremacist structures; Sanchez-Taylor argues that its racial tropes are tied to a history of colonization and Christian missionary practices, with popular fantasy narratives often depicting Indigenous groups as primitive, deviant peoples in need of salvation. Such representations are based on a Western binary of rational versus magical and are influenced by tenets of Christianity, ultimately contributing to depictions of the dark fantastic or fantasy worlds where dark and othered characters are implicitly portrayed as evil and irredeemable. Organized around four Christian ideals that appear frequently in Western fantasy textsvirtue, envy, patriarchy, and salvationDispelling Fantasies demonstrates how non-Eurocentric fantasy worlds offer alternative versions of morality, race, gender, and sexuality and make space for authors to move away from hierarchical, binary systems of good and evil.
