Interview of Dr. Isiah Lavender III, Sterling Goodman Professor of English at the University of Georgia Kimberly Williams: Okay. My name is Kimberly Williams of the University of Florida and I am interviewing Dr. Isiah Lavender. [tsk] Today is January the 30th. We are in Orlando at the University of Central Florida and this is part of the Zora Neale Hurston Festival and Conference. [tsk] So if you could state, um, your name. Isiah Lavender: Okay. I'm Isiah… Kimberly Williams: Yes. Isiah Lavender: …Lavender the III. Kimberly Williams: Yes. [laughter] Awesome. [0:29] And can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you came into this work of Afrofuturism? Isiah Lavender: Oh, my goodness. That is, uh, a simple, complex question all in one. Right? So, um, let me go with my standard answer. Uh, [tsk], my earliest memory is Star Wars and, uh, I remember seeing Han Solo, uh, shoot Greedo first, this fantastic green-skinned character, uh, in Star Wars, the very first Star Wars, not A New Hope as it's labeled number 4 but Star Wars. Right? And I remember being thrilled by seeing Greedo’s, uh, metallic green skin and thinking oh, that’s pretty interesting. This is me in 1977. I'm 3 years old. I saw it at, uh, the [Angle 1:17], uh, Drive-In in, in Upstate New York. Right? Uh, and so, uh, it's a, it's an important memory to me because, you know, it's, it's my earliest one and, uh, I can remember the trash compactor scene and falling asleep and… Kimberly Williams: Hm. Isiah Lavender: …waking up in my dad’s arms as he carried me into our house, uh, in a, a light misting rain. And so that green skin stuck with me. Uh, I can relate it to movies even more when I think about Blade Runner and, uh, the voiceover where c-, uh, the captain, uh, [Inaudible 1:53] Deckard’s character said well this is the kind of cop that referred to, uh, skinjobs or the replicants in the film, uh, as, as niggers. And I'm like oh, my gosh. And well what's that? But then I had, uh, an awareness and a, a racial awakening, uh, sometime in between 2nd and 3rd grade when I used to like running against the bus. And in the morning, I mouthed off to some 4th graders 'cause I had a, a fast tongue and what I thought were faster feet. [laughter] And so I forgot that moment and then I got off at the bus, 3 feet of snow in February, uh, and I tried to race the, uh, the bus in my Blue Moon Boots and I lost the race… Kimberly Williams: Hm. Isiah Lavender: …and, uh, the 4th graders had gotten off the bus and, uh, uh, [tsk], uh, they circled me, called me a nigger and kicked the crap outta me in my front yard and I was in one of those fetal balls trying to protect myself. Uh, bus driver got off the bus, saved my life when she came back around. ‘Cause, you know, kids can go too far. And so… Kimberly Williams: Yes. Isiah Lavender: …I remember bloody – leaving a Moon Boot behind, uh, and getting into the front door, uh, and asking my mom later, “Mom, what's a nigger?” And so… Kimberly Williams: Yeah. Isiah Lavender: …uh, it was big brouhaha at the school as you can imagine in the, uh, parent-teacher association, uh, and being forced to ride at the front of the bus for the rest of the school year because, uh, they were trying to protect me. And, uh, my dad giving me the Martian Chronicles, uh, and my mom giving me the Martian Chronicles, one of them and saying read this story way in the middle of the year. Right? So that was a different moment. Uh, uh, I'm just thinking of science fiction in general at this point. And then, uh, I also suffered from institutionalized racism and didn’t know it. In the second grade, I was put in special ed and, uh, my teacher, Mrs. [Ennis 3:52], who I thank every moment, uh, said you don’t belong here and threw a, a novel called The Mouse and the Movor-, Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. Uh, had me into gifted and talented within 6 weeks. And so that, that was another formative moment where it seems like race and science fiction are fantastic literature, has always inextricably been intwined in my life. And both of my parents were avid readers. And so I read all kinds of things that I should not have read, like, uh, Harlequin Romances. Johanna Lindsey and Bertrice Small were the big writers. My sister’s Sweet Valley High books and Baby-Sitters Club, Zane Grey and Louis L’amore from, uh, [tsk] Western traditions and, and science fiction and whatever I could get my hands on, like Chose Your Own Adventure, uh, novels and Twistaplots and Endless Quests. And so those were the kinds of things that I was reading and playing with my Star Wars and very different, uh, you know, action figures at that time because they came in multiple sizes and colors and, and, uh, those were interesting times in my childhood. And, um, Afrofuturism for me really doesn’t come about unt-, until Milestone Media, uh, in 1992, ’93 when I was a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh and, uh, in the Homewood section and going to the comic book shop and say oh, my gosh; this is so cool. Right? And so I know Reynaldo was talking about he’s a Marvel man. I, I [laughter] read Marvel too but I was mostly Milestone Media because of, uh, [papers rustling] the 4 comic books that started Milestone Media – Hardware, Static, Blood Syndicate and Icon. And I collected all of them. And I have one of those sad stories about, uh, I – when I would transfer to Southern University for the rest of my undergraduate career. For 3 years, uh, I stayed with my aunt that was there and I left my comics there that I was accruing on a weekly basis. And when she moved, uh, back to Atlanta, she tossed all my stuff out. Right? One a those sad stories 'cause I wish I had that collection. But, uh, you know, uh, uh, Virgil Hawkins from Static was really an important, uh, character for me and so I became Static shocked. They even gave him a, a, a role on, on the, uh, cartoon series. Right? And so that was kind of, uh, neat because it, it helped me, uh, uh, see black culture in a different way just like, uh, The Blood Syndicate group, uh, and that, that bad guy team up in that novel – right – or villain team up, I should say, was, uh, another way of, of seeing, uh, the world in this city, the Dakotaverse. And I'm – you know, I'm realized how strongly, uh, that milestone really influenced my way of, of thinking. But then I was also into reading, uh, [tsk] Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and thinking about what that past means for the future. And 18, 19, 20, I didn’t know Afrofuturism existed. Uh, so in my first book, Race in American Science Fiction, I tried to creat other hoods as my idea, uh, to combat Afrofuturism, uh, because I was, uh, [tsk] for lack of a better description, dumb. I'm not gonna let some white guy tag this entire thing for, for people in the world. It should be named by a black person and this is [my attempt 7:42]. And that was just idiotic thinking of a, of a young 20-something working on a dissertation and saying well, no, this is really something and a-, as long as it starts. And, you know, I'm a, a member of the human species and take it out from there, then race is a silly concept in some ways. But… Kimberly Williams: Yeah. Isiah Lavender: …it affects us. Kimberly Williams: Absolutely. [laughter] Absolutely. Thank you so much for that very thorough and vulnerable [tapping] sort of like trajectory, you know, of [you c- 8:14]… Isiah Lavender: Oh, I, I… Kimberly Williams: …[you came 8:15]… Isiah Lavender: …try and be as honest as I can in any… Kimberly Williams: …[futurism 8:17]. Isiah Lavender: …situ-… Kimberly Williams: Yes. Isiah Lavender: ….-ation. Kimberly Williams: Yeah. [8:19] And [laughter] so with that and I know you kind of touched on that already, uh, but anything else have you missed in terms of thinking about how you define Afrofuturism? Isiah Lavender: Defining Afrofuturism is such a difficult thing. [tsk] It's like trying to, to define science fiction. Kimberly Williams: Hm. Isiah Lavender: And so I would go with the idea that you know it when you see it and that’s why we have lots of people responding to, uh, Black Panther the way that they have. Right? And when my 8-year-old says I wanna be a rhino rider, I'm like wow, this is a really powerful thing that I've been studying that has gone all of – filtered all the way down to my 8-year-old’s mind in 2018 and he – you know, he’s almost 10 now. Right? But that was an amazing statement to me. So when I, when I think of Afrofuturism, the definition that I like, uh, is, is, uh, uh, science fictional blackness, uh, uh, eh, in line with what Greg Tate says in the founding – uh, interview with, with Mark Derry in Black to the Future where, uh, uh, uh, black people live a science fictional existence. And then you expand on that with the idea that well, uh, blacks were stolen by foreign people, alien people, taken to, uh, an alien environment in alien ships, forced to speak alien languages, uh, and live in alien existence. If that’s not science fiction, I don’t know what is. Right? And so that’s a-, another definition. As I was trying to think my way through Afrofuturism, I'd – you know, I wrote my book, uh, uh, Afrofuturism Rising and came up with ideas, uh, at least new ideas and concepts to me, such as the networked black consciousness, which was not my own – right – that I just developed it further than [Inaudible 10:11], at least in my opinion. And then, uh, the idea of, of, uh, uh, the trans-historic feedback loop, uh, where this history is informing the present, informing the future and it goes in cycles in tandem with something like the, uh, uh, hyperreal violence loop, which we can trace ad infinitum all the way back to, uh, the first Africans rise up, at least as we say, The 1619 Project, the first Africans arriving in the New World. Of course, they were here before that but, uh, you can see the violence, uh, uh, inflicted on black bodies from then… Kimberly Williams: Hm. Isiah Lavender: …all the way up and through 20-, uh, let's say January 30, 2020, 'cause it's happening to someone… Kimberly Williams: Yeah. Isiah Lavender: …that looks like us somewhere… Kimberly Williams: Yes. Isiah Lavender: …right now as we speak. Right? And so, uh, uh, in addition to that, eh, you, you get black people, uh, communicating with each other across time. Maybe it's intertextual across space just through holding an object, like f-, uh, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and seeing how this violence impacts us and how he thinks his way through it into the future and how Harriet Jacobs thinks her way through it into the future and, and how we can apply that now and that provides us with a sense of hope. So I was calling that the hope… Kimberly Williams: Hm. Isiah Lavender: …impulse. Some people maybe call it Afrotopia, utopian and then people were, well how is Afrofuturism against Afropessimism and I say oh, no, no, no. Afropessimism falls underneath Afrofuturism because Afrofuturism isn't just about utopia. It's about the way, uh, there are different black worlds projected by black people and their writings. And then I had my mind blown in a, a piece that, uh, Delany did for me in Beyond Afrofuturism where, where, you know, he’s just, you know, white people can [white 12:06] Afrofuturism because it's, uh, uh, eh, it's images of black characters in black worlds and white writers can do that too. And if we all belong to the same species, as we do, then every-, I mean that’s [e-, da- 12:20], but that’s really crazy beyond what we think in terms of Afrofuturism, which made it perfect for, uh, the double issues of extrapolation. So I, I don’t go that far in my own thinking but, uh, it was said by one of the progenitors of Afrofuturism, so how can Samuel R. Delany be wrong? Magnificent human being. Kimberly Williams: That is very true. Yes. [laughter] That is very true. Yes. And again, I, I really love how organically you are offering transitions and bridging into every single of my questions. [laughter] [12:52] So, um, from your perspective, what does Afrofuturism offer society at this moment in terms of, um, maybe it's critique, liberation or opportunity? Isiah Lavender: I think it is, uh, critique. It offers critiques of the past in terms of, of how people have lived together, have been treated. I think it provides a way into, uh, the future of race relations. Uh, it's, it's – what do I mean by the future of race relations? I mean how we get along. Like I was I just, uh, in conversation, uh, that Reynaldo, uh, mentioned that book by that, uh, [tsk] Muslim-American and, and, and, you know, he said he name dr-, he forgot the name. Right? The name slipped his mind and I'm oh, that’s Omar El Akkad, uh, uh, American War, uh, which has a, a black protagonist in it, which is a, a pretty fascinating book when you move forward and you're looking at it and it's in the 2070s, uh… Male: Is this… Kimberly Williams: [Inaudible 14:07] Isiah Lavender: No. That’s okay. And, and you are projecting into, uh, the future with that novel where you have the Civil War and this, uh, native of what was once Louisiana, a young woman with a long gun takes out the, uh, uh – if I'm, I'm with – takes out the American president of, of the Union and, eh, and that’s where it is. I've still have 50 pages left to go in the novel. That’s where… Kimberly Williams: [Mm-hm 14:36]. Isiah Lavender: …[laughter] I'm in it, so I don’t quite know where it ends yet but that’s, you know, uh, uh, 1 possible future, 1 act of Afrofuturism written by, uh, uh, an Asian-American or a Middle Eastern-American projecting into the future. And I think that’s what Delany’s talking about because this viewpoint character is, is a, a black girl h-, that, that takes up arms to fight for the South, eh, or the new South in the books. You like wow, this is a fascinating, uh, text and take on it. And so I don’t – I've, I've lost the thread of your question but just [laughter] looking at – oh, I've, I've got it back. So it offers glimpses of possible futures and helps us see around issues of race, see around issues of gender, see around, eh, eh, uh, uh, intersectionalities, to use Patricia Hill’s Collins’ thinking. Right? And so that, that’s an important tool and avenue for human beings, uh, uh, surviving as a species. I mean how else – I mean I'm flipping – I'm thinking climate change and things like that now. So if we can't think our way through, uh, uh, our own disagreements, how are we going to combat what we've done to this planet? Oh, uh, the planet’ll fight back and, and kill us and then, you know, what species will rise next? Eh, that’s – but that’s crazy. Kimberly Williams: Yes. [laughter] That is true. We have seen that through, oh goodness, cinema and, and life. Isiah Lavender: Right? Kimberly Williams: That is, that is [tapping] very true. Isiah Lavender: Right? Kimberly Williams: That is true. [16:16] So in your, in your mind, what's the link between – you know, we're at this festival, um, celebrating – [remembering 16:22] Zora Neale Hurston? What's the link between Hurston and Afrofuturism? Isiah Lavender: [sighing] Well I'm going to talk about that a little bit in my talk, uh, tomorrow. But for me, uh, Hurston is, uh, [tsk] an active agent of Afrofuturism in that she has scientific training with Franz Boas at Columbia University. She has an ear for, uh, uh, native dialects and an interest in capturing stories from her people that represent, uh, uh, the black diaspora in the United States and the Caribbean. And so she uses tape recorders and she uses cameras and takes pictures, these high-end technologies in the early 20th century, uh, to help tell these stories. And then, uh, she listens to them and she projects them in, uh, all of her novels. Right? So Jonah’s Gourd Vine, uh, and, and the hoodoo that is put on, uh, the main character is, is a fascinating Afrofuturist application when you go beyond the science and technology that is – oh, my air quotes – that, [laughter] that goes, you know – that takes Afrofuturism in a direction that we don’t think of in terms of hardcore sciences. When you get into native scientific practices and religious beliefs, that opens up all of her work and so you can see that on display in Their Eyes Were Watching God’s; Seraph on the Suwanee… Kimberly Williams: Mm-hm. Isiah Lavender: …Moses, Man of the Mountain and so – and her short stories. And then so all of it is relevant to what she does. Like I was fascinated by hearing about the, the esoteric traditions. That’s a avenue of thought I never, uh, even considered that Reynaldo was, was telling us about in his key note and so, uh, I think she has everything to do with Afrofuturism. I think, uh, uh, after Zora Neale Hurston and before, uh, Octavia Butler that’s a – there's a direct linking connection there. Where’s the missing link? That’s something that I'm… Kimberly Williams: [Mm-hm 18:34]. [tapping] Isiah Lavender: …interested in now, finding that black… Kimberly Williams: Hm. Isiah Lavender: …female author between those 2 writers, eh, 'cause, uh, there has to be. Kimberly Williams: Absolutely. Isiah Lavender: And, and so that's, that’s something that I'm going to go in search of. Maybe I shouldn't put that on tape but, but I am. Kimberly Williams: Okay. [laughter] Yeah. Awesome. [18:53] And do you think the Zora Neale Hurston Festival engagement with Afrofuturism continues Hurston’s legacy? Isiah Lavender: Absolutely. And, and I say absolutely because different people are offering different perspectives and different ways of thinking about Zora Neale Hurston’s work. You know, it's been read in terms of folklore. It's been read in terms of humor. It's been read in terms of race and gender. Why not what it can mean for future generations? What kinds of future stories, uh, are she te-, is she telling? All right? And, and I, I think of – if we just use Their Eyes Were Watching God, uh, it's telling us how people can get together, how, uh, black people themselves, uh, have been humanized by her story and in ways that, uh, mainstream America might not have accepted and, uh, you know, I know Richard Wright didn’t accept it when he criticizes Hurston’s novel. Uh, but she had a much better ear for dialect that he does in Native Son and so the 2 become, uh, enemies in a – of, of sort and so, you know, interesting writers, interesting period. But, uh, you know, Hurston’s legacy is ongoing because she’s cond-, uh, I mean I just listened to that Afrofuturism in Russia connected to Zora Neale Hurston. I was like wow, this is fascinating. So who, eh – her impact is, is still going. It's like a nuclear explosion and we don’t know when the radiation of her magnificence is going to end. I hope it doesn’t. And so, eh, Zora Neale Hurston Society is doing a fabulous work and thinking about, uh, the context of Hurston’s novels and short stories and folklore and journalism and extending that into the future. Keeping, keeping her work alive is impacting future generations even now. And so I f-, I sound like I'm talking in circles but this is that, that time loop that is, is a necessary thing as it's ongoing into the, into, uh, the future and so I can't wait for my own sons to encounter her work so to speak. Yeah. Kimberly Williams: [21:15] And that’s – that actually gets into – and, and of course, you sort of touched on that, um, just now. But really thinking about what can contemporary Afrofuturists learn from Hurston and also early black writers and thinkers and scholars? Isiah Lavender: Can learn to, uh, listen. I mean I don’t mean, yes, you're reading the words on the page. But you're also, you know, creating this little motion picture in your head, eh, this synesthesia, this synesthetic experience that she is producing, uh, like the people on Joe porches – um, on Joe Starks’ porch. Right? Uh, uh, sharing thought pictures, it sounds like telepathy to me. And so I talk about that in my book and I'll talk about that tomorrow, uh, in our talk or you could switch to like, uh, uh, Sweat and Delia Jones and Joe Clarke’s storefront porch and the conversation that’s going on there. You know, it may be in the past but relationships, uh, between the sexes have been around forever and they’ll s-, be around as long as the human species inhabits the earth. And so we can learn about how men and women think about each other and how we can cross the, the biological divide in a sense. And so I think, uh, her work is, is wonderful [and in 22:47] doing this. And I, I've also believe that there are undiscovered writers, uh, such as, you heard The Princess Steel and, and W.E.B. Du Bois’ early work that was recovered by, uh, Adrienne Maree Brown and Britt Rusert. And these earlier things are being discovered all the time. And so what do you, what do you do with that? How do you examine that? What framework do you bring to it? And so it's like, uh, uh, John Akmofrah’s Data Thief in The Last Angel of History. We're coming back finding this piece, bringing it into the future and talking about it and, and synthesizing it and, and thinking about the information and the snapshot of, of history, uh, that’s provided and, and how you use that into, uh – take that into the future where you get, uh, uh, uh, a hip hop group like Clipping and their, uh, wonderful slave slip computer love story – oh, I'm forgetting the name of the song. But it, eh, but it's fantastic and you're like oh, my gosh. And, and, you know, these artists are reaching into the past, mining it, eh, taking it in the future, flipping it, remixing it, rethinking it and, and saying wow, this is how, uh, we think about the future of race. As long as it continues as a concept, Afrofuturism will be useful. Now what can you do with it? It's, it's – I think it's representative of the colored wave of science fiction right now, so, uh, which is, uh, Afrofuturism first and indigenous futurism is taking off. Techno-orientalism or Asian futurisms that have developed from that fear of, of the Yellow Peril back in the, in the late 19th century is taking off, uh, indigenous futurisms. As I, as I've already said, it – all of the Latinx futurisms [or 24:41] all of this can be linked back to Afrofuturism in a sense and you can take that back as far as you want and, and probably should. And so, uh, [tsk] in thinking about this, uh, I think about Nnedi Okorafor and, and s-, her resistance to being labeled an Afrofuturist. She is an [Africanfuturist 25:03] – one word – in her thinking and, yet, there’s resistance from the afro-, uh, from the actual African continent. Hey, oh no, Nnedi, you're a first generation [Nige- 25:14] American – right – you don’t get to tell us what our writing is. And so trying to come up with a label of what… Kimberly Williams: Mm-hm. Isiah Lavender: …science fiction fantasy from the African continent should be called. Eh, it's, uh, you know – these debates can go on, uh, forever and they should. It's a good proper, uh, academic scrum, I guess, [laughter] for lack of a better description. So I love it. I'm, I'm invested in seeing where it goes as long as I'm walking this earth. Kimberly Williams: And what I really like about your responses and your answers, it really, [tapping] um, just kind of defines and curates so much around like multisensory, multiethnic, multi theory and it sort of really makes me think about, um, your text in Rising too as well. [26:04] Did you want to talk a little bit about that sort of like creation making too? Isiah Lavender: Man. [sighing] Well books are, uh, a hard thing. They're, they're not hard but they take a long time as you're sitting there thinking about stuff and distilling your thought and going out and presenting, uh, at various conferences and, and getting feedback and criticism and incorporating all of that into, uh, the production of a book. And so, uh, I purposefully did not want to write about, uh, Delany’s work and Butler’s work and Steven Barnes’ work and Nalo Hopkinson’s work, uh, at the time that I was writing because those books have been written. Those scholars – those authors have been written about in terms of science fiction and, and Afrofuturism as well. And I love talking about them. I love reading them. But I've, I've come about to thinking of Afrofuturism as black science fictional experience because of Greg Tate and I decided that, you know, I've taught Their Eyes Were Watching God any number of times and it always comes across as a science fictional work to me but that doesn’t quite fit it, so Afrofuturism. Uh, but I developed my own thinking on Afrofuturism to, uh, kind of fit how I saw Their Eyes Were Watching God and, uh, Native Son and, uh, [tsk] Captain Blackman and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and any number of African-American texts that are not science fiction by any stretch the e-, imagination but are Afrofuturism. And so that to me was the more important book to write than – I, I know people are going to write on Delany as an Afrofuturist and Butler and as an Afrofuturist and Steven Barnes as an Afrofuturist and I'm going to write on them that way too, um, but not at a book [inaudible 28:12]. I thought it was important to help, uh, answer the challenge of, of, uh, the idea that African-American literature was dead – oh, what was – African-American literature – was the name of, of the book? And I'm forgetting, uh, the guy that had it, uh, that, that said it – which is terrible. Name blanking happens. Right? Kimberly Williams: Yeah. Isiah Lavender: Uh, but that was also a conscious response to that. No, I don’t think so and so I was telling people I also thought about, uh, writing a chapter on Song of Solomon with Toni Morrison but that would've… Kimberly Williams: [Mm-hm 28:48]. Isiah Lavender: …taken a long time because there’s so much scholarship to sift through and a lot of thinking to sift through. But The Myth of the Flying African is something that needs to be discussed somewhat in terms of Afrofuturism and I thought well someone else can write that story. If my book influences anybody, I would like to… Kimberly Williams: Mm-hm. Isiah Lavender: …see that. I thought about writing on, uh, Flight to Canada as well and Raven Quicksill’s Story and Uncle Robin in terms of being an Afrofuturism story and, eh, and it is. But then there was an Afrofuturism conference at Yale and I had [throat clearing] got wind of someone writing on Flight to Canada and I think I just saw it in African-American Review or, or some such journal, um, that actual essay and I'm, aww, they said it pretty well. I don’t think I – I'm glad I decided not to write on that story even though I had gone through my process and typed up every quote from that novel and, uh, uh, typed up every quote from, uh, my research on that novel from journals and book chapters and books on Ishmael Reed. And like, aww, sometimes you have to let things go. And so at one point, I felt, uh, well in the very recent past, I've said everything I wanna say about Afrofuturism but it seemingly will not let me go. [laughter] Right? And so I am – I'm – but I'm still – I've moved on to my next book project and, and that's, uh, critical race theory and science fiction, um, and so that’s what my, my heart is in now. But, uh, I'm always paying attention to Afrofuturism and I guess critical race theory and science fiction could fall underneath that umbrella that, that I think a-, Afrofuturism has created for, uh, the study of race and ethnicity and science fiction, which is, uh, my bread and butter so to speak. Kimberly Williams: Okay. Yeah. All right. And last question… Isiah Lavender: Okay. Kimberly Williams: [30:42] Um, if you could – [you know 30:42], if someone was coming in here like, you know, [tsk] Dr. Lavender, I really, really wanna get into Afrofuturism, could you give me almost like a [tapping] seminal, like mixed tape of, of sort of entryway to kind of like get into, like 3 to 5 all across mediums? It could be artists, film, song… Isiah Lavender: Okay. Kimberly Williams: …text? Isiah Lavender: A mixed tape of Afrofuturism. One, I would see the film The Last Angel of History by John Akmofrah. That’s a, uh, certainly an important work. Two, I would read, uh, uh, [Inaudible 31:21] work, uh, because he is an important Afrofuturist scholar, early Afrofuturism scholar. Then I would choose any book by Samuel R. Delany, probably, uh, Dhalgren or Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand, uh, because he’s, eh, excellent. Then I would also choose Octavia Butler, uh, [tsk] in terms of, uh, her, eh – I mean you’d choose her just because she is magnificent and I would go with Parable of the Sower because it's my favorite Butler novel. Uh, then uh, I think I would, uh, bring in the Caribbean-inflected, uh, version of Afrofuturism, uh, with Nalo Hopkinson’s first novel, Brown Girl in the Ring. Kimberly Williams: [Mm-hm 32:08]. Isiah Lavender: And, uh, musically c-, I would go with my favorite hip hop group, uh, uh, Outkast. And I know there are lots of different groups but that’s, that’s who I'm partial to. Kimberly Williams: Great. Isiah Lavender: And so there, there’s so much. Uh, artwork, I honestly I don’t know enough about, uh, the world of art but, uh, again if I come back to, uh, the beginning of this talk, you know Afrofuturism when you see it... Kimberly Williams: [Hm 32:35]. Isiah Lavender: …and so you have to have Black Panther, uh, the Coogler film. You cannot avoid it. And I think I've given you like 8. [laughter] And so there’s so much. Kimberly Williams: Is that all? Isiah Lavender: Where do you stop? Kimberly Williams: [Inaudible 32:46]. [laughter] Thank you so much again for your time and for your thorough, um, just really, really enriching responses and answers… Isiah Lavender: Oh, thank you. Kimberly Williams: …and really appreciate that. Isiah Lavender: Oh, it was a lotta fun. Kimberly Williams: Yes. [Inaudible 33:00]. Isiah Lavender: Harmless, painless. [laughter] Kimberly Williams: Yes. /lo