Close encounters: “Connection” and Lu Ain-Zaila’s Diasporic Afrofuturism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/1678-2054.2025vol45n2p127Keywords:
Afro-Brazilian literature, African Diaspora, Afrofuturism, Lu Ain-ZailaAbstract
In his article “Black to the Future”, literary critic Mark Dery coined the term Afrofuturism, giving a name to a movement that, since the 1980s, had already been popularized in the artistic realm, including music, literature, performances, etc. The term Afrofuturism was quickly adopted by critics and scholars, though not without considerable controversy. Considering these recent theoretical debates on Black fantasy and science fiction, we pose a crucial question to this essay: how do Afrofuturist Black authors understand Afrofuturism produced in Brazil? In this article, we study the important writer Lu Ain-Zaila, to investigate how her theoretical and literary productions mark Brazilian Afrofuturism as differing from other forms of Black speculative writing. We analyze the short story “Connection” from her volume Sankofia, examining how it expresses the author’s concept of Brazilian Afrofuturism. We propose that Lu forges a conception of Afrofuturism notedly centered on African culture and traditions, as well as the history of Black struggle and resistance in Brazil.
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