This dissertation examines representations of black lives in adolescent speculative fiction and explores what the genre offers to anti-racist teacher education. Situating my study at the intersections of literacy education and children’s literature studies, I interrogate assumptions surrounding genre conventions adopted in multicultural education. I argue that the genre of black speculative fiction offer tools to the anti-racist educator because it tackles difficult issues surrounding systemic racism and privilege, yet does so in a manner that offers the potential for navigating white resistance strategies through the creation of literary spaces of inquiry. My framework, which theorizes the ability of multicultural speculative literature to critique systemic oppression, is built off two forces of the fantastic—subversion and criticl distance. These competing and complementary forces provide readers with space in which to reflect on systemic oppression and hegemony.My dissertation serves as a bridge between the fields of education and English literature. As such, the body of the text is organized into four discreet yet connected articles. The first two articles are literary analyses of works of black speculative adolescent fiction. In one study, I trace entwined junctures of neoliberal policies and contemporary slavery in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I argue that Butler hails the genre of the parable, unveiled through a series of literary slipstages, to present readers with evidence of contemporary white perpetuation of systemic racism. In the second article, I examine exclusion of transnational black youth from full US citizenship in Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch. I argue that Okorafor rewrites US citizenship as a concept now requiring, not simply tolerating, full cultural and racial inclusion. I then place these texts in the hands of readers, examining pre-service teacher discourses around these works of literature. I focus on student talk around race and privilege. In my third article, I report on a case study examining pre-service teacher discourse over Parable of the Sower. This study, based on data from teacher education classroom discussions and writing assignments, indicates that students can maintain rich conversations around risky topics in a way that complicates Haviland’s (2008) notion of White Educational Discourse. The fourth article, based on classroom data from two teacher education courses that discuss Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch, complicates the concept of “safe space” as implemented in classroom discussions surrounding race. I argue that critical distance in black speculative fiction creates not safe spaces, but spaces of inquiry where social justice-minded readers can raise issues and push back again racism with peers. Most anti-racist scholarship that incorporates youth literature rests on the assumption that realistic fiction offers authentic representations of black lives and experiences. I trouble these assumptions through sustained focus on genre conventions and reader engagement with those conventions. My dissertation questions the limited notions of black lives created by overreliance on realistic genres and advocates for education scholarship that recognizes black futures, black imagination(s), and black innovations.
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