This book offers innovative approaches to teaching Black speculative fiction (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror) in ways that will inspire middle and high school students to think, talk, and write about issues of equity, justice, and antiracism.
Teaching Black Speculative Fiction: Equity, Justice, and Antiracism edited by KaaVonia Hinton and Karen Michele Chandler offers innovative approaches to teaching Black speculative fiction (e.g., science fiction, fantasy, horror) in ways that will inspire middle and high school students to think, talk, and write about issues of equity, justice, and antiracism. The book highlights texts by seminal authors such as Octavia E. Butler and influential and emerging authors, including Nnedi Okorafor, Kacen Callender, B. B. Alston, Tomi Adeyemi, and Bethany C. Morrow.
Each chapter in Teaching Black Speculative Fiction:
- introduces a Black speculative text and its author,
- describes how the text engages with issues of equity, justice, and/or antiracism,
- explains and describes how one theory or approach helps elucidate the key texts concern with equity, justice, and/or antiracism, and
- offers engaging teaching activities that encourage students to read the focal text; that facilitate exploration of the text and a theoretical lens or critical approach; and that guide students to consider ways to extend the focus on equity, justice, and/or antiracism to action in their own lives and communities.
Acknowledgments
Black Speculative Fiction as Anchor, Compass, and Sail
KaaVonia Hinton and Karen Michele Chandler
1. Exploring the Complexities of Environmental Disaster, Justice, and Racism
in Ninth Ward
Julianna Lopez Kershen
2. The Responsibility to Remember: India Hill Browns The Forgotten Girl
Saba Khan Vlach
3. Reading and Engaging with Kacen Callenders Moonflower through
Intersectional Pedagogies
Meghna Prabir
4. Illusions of Identity: Counternarratives in B. B. Alstons Amari and the
Night Brothers
Jessica Gottbrath
5. The Power of Voice and Choice: Examining Blackness, Black Girlhood, and
Identity in A Song Below Water
Christian M. Hines and Jenell Igeleke Penn
6. Creative Disruptions: Protest Art and Alaya Dawn Johnsons The Summer
Prince
Amanda M. Greenwell
7. Resilience, Resistance, and Healing in Tomi Adeyemis Children of Blood
and Bone
Danielle Kubasko Sullivan
8. Teaching Counterstorytelling in High School using Tomi Adeyemis Children
of Blood and Bone
Tabitha Lowery
9. Using a Historical Lens to Examine Agency in Mother of the Sea
Tiffany A. Flowers
10. The Monster or the (Wo)Man in Victor LaValles Destroyer
Jasmine H. Wade
11. Race in the Zombie Apocalypse: Teaching Justina Irelands Dread Nation
Michael Patrick Hart
12. Nnedi Okorafors Lagoon: Classroom Projects from an Animal Rights
Perspective
Rosa Maria Moreno-Redondo
13. Slavery Was a Long Slow Process of Dulling: Octavia Butlers Kindred as
a Medium for Teaching Empathy, Social Justice, and Antiracism
Colin Enriquez
14. Slavery was a choice?: Lessons from Kindred by Octavia Butler
Mercy Agyepong
15. I Serve the Spirits and I Heal the Living: Communities of Care as Sites
of Resistance in Hopkinsons Brown Girl in the Ring
Justin Cosner
16. Understanding by Design with Nalo Hopkinsons Midnight Robber
Toni S. Stevens
Resources
Index
KaaVonia Hinton is a professor in the Teaching & Learning Department at Old Dominion University and the author of many articles and books about literature for youth. She is also the co-editor, with Lucy E. Bailey, of the book series, Research in Life Writing and Education (Information Age Publishing).
Karen Michele Chandler is an associate professor of English at the University of Louisville and the author of many articles on African American, American, and youth literature. She is the co-editor, with Michelle H. Martin, of a special issue of International Research in Childrens Literature on Black spaces. Her book, Tending to the Past: Selfhood and Culture in Childrens Narratives about Slavery and Freedom, is forthcoming in 2024.
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