Interview of author Phenderson Djèlí Clark at the 
Zora Neale Hurston Festival in Eatonville, Florida


Grace Chun:	Hello.  Uh.

Phenderson Clark:	Hello.

Grace Chun:	My name is Grace Chun and today is [clicking] January 31st, 2020, and we are here at the Zora Neale Hurston Festival in the Zora’s Place House.  Um. [0:13] Could you please introduce [clicking] yourself?

Phenderson Clark:	[tsk] Hello.  My name is Phenderson [G. 0:17] Clark.  Uh, pardon me.  Let’s start that over again. [laughter] I’m using 2 names.  That’s when I was a [writer student 0:22].  I can just go again?

Grace Chun:	Mm-hm.

Phenderson Clark:	Okay.  My name is Phenderson Djèlí Clark.  Uh.  I also write under the name P. Djèlí Clark. [clicking] [tsk] Uh.  I’m a writer of speculative fiction.

Grace Chun:	[0:33] Can you tell us a little bit more about growing up a little bit?

Phenderson Clark:	Oh, yeah.  Sure.  So I was born in, uh, New York.  Queens, New York, to be exact.  Queens.  Uh.  But at a young age, my parents who were, uh, immigrants from the West Indies sent me back to live with my grandparents, uh, so I spent the first, uh, 7 or so years of my life, [tsk] uh, after – I think after the age of 1, I spent the next 7 years [tsk] in, uh, the West Indies on the island of Trinidad and Tobago in a place called Chaguanas, Trinidad, in fact, uh, where I spent my formative years.  Um. [tsk] And, uh, after that, I moved back to the United States, uh, where I lived in New York City and, uh, stayed there for a short while and then we moved, uh, to Texas and [laughter] so I actually – uh, most a my life, uh, where I went to college, where I went to [tsk], uh, most a middle school and high school was in Texas.  And I, uh, spent a lotta time in Houston, Texas, so I’ve got a, you know, bit of a range.  I’m now located in New England but, you know, I’ve lived a few places, yeah.

Grace Chun:	[1:48] Uh, and can you tell me how you started your work in Afrofuturism?

Phenderson Clark:	Well, [tsk] when I started, I didn’t know what Afrofuturism [laughter] was.  Uh.  I think I’ve always had an interest in [clicking] various forms a speculative fiction. [tsk] Even growing up in, uh, Trinidad when I was smaller, uh, I had folk tales from my grandmother, I had folk takes from the community. [tsk] I grew up in a community that was, uh, [thumping] that was a mix of, uh, persons of African descent, [clicking] uh, Afro-Creolized people, um, Afro-Trinidadians that is, as well as, uh, people from the Indian subcontinent, um, [tsk] who also were a large bulk of the population.  And so [tsk] I grew up with a mix of Afro-Creole-type folktales, um, of, uh, of, of Hindu stories and images and television shows.  And so, um, if you, you take a mix of this as well as, um, Muslim festivals, so all this was just part of my young upbringing.  I think, from [tsk] that very early age, uh, I h-, I knew I had this strong interest in the fantastic, right.  Before it’s even called futurism, I had this strong interest in things that were fantastic and otherworldly.  Uh.  When I came to the United States, this was just nurtured more, uh, by, uh, an onslaught of media from television to, uh, movies to books.  Uh.  Both my parents, my mother was a, uh, a big Twilight Zone fan. [laughter] Uh.  She also liked the original Star Trek.  Um.  She took my sister and I to the libraries where we would spend hours just devouring books and so all of that really helped.

	On my father’s side, um, he, he grew up on a lot of older movies with people like Peter Cushing and these kind of older horror movies.  He, he was a big fan of Godzilla [laughter] movies.  He loved Star Wars.  He would take us to see that kind of thing.  And so, uh, you know, as well as it being part of the larger culture, uh, part of my family upbringing, and I come to the United States and just bein’ exposed to it in, in various ways even as kids with other, with other kids.  I grew up in [tsk], you know, mostly, uh, Black neighborhoods that were a mix of Black and Brown neighborhoods that are a mix of people from various parts [inaudible 4:10].  All of us as kids, we, we loved various things whether it was Star Wars or, you know, uh, some television show or it was comic books.  This was just what we were talking about in-between all the other things kids talk about, so it was just always there.  Yeah.

Grace Chun:	[4:28] So how would you define Afrofuturism?

Phenderson Clark:	Hm.  That’s interesting because [tsk] there’s a way that Afrofuturism [is now 4:36] often seen as this umbrella term for various aspects of Black spacula-, speculative fiction and I don’t know that I agree.  Like I, I’ve written stories before that I understand how people interpret them as Afrofuturism but I’ve also had people ask me like well, that story you wrote was Afrofuturism.  I’m like well, that was a complete fantasy story that’s set in a preindustrial [laughter] world.  There’s, there’s absolutely nothing futuristic about it.  It, it’s more so a form of speculative fiction and fantasy that has, uh, Black characters and African antecedents.  And so [tsk] to me, Afrofuturism, I, I’ve always look at as, for one, having something to do with some form of the future, right?  Imagining possibilities of how Black people will exist, uh, in the future or can exist in the future or even futurist ideas, uh, within our present state and imagining what those would be like whether it is utopian, dystopian, or something in-between.  Now, I think where my writing – some a my writing fits in [clicking] is that, uh, I think there’s a term that I really like using called, uh, retro.  Uh, a, a ref-, retrofuturism or retro Afrofuturism.  And I thought I had coined that term but I did not.  It turned out that, uh, perhaps like minds think alike and the person who I realize in writings who was using that term is, um, I’m sorry.  I’m blanking on her name at the moment.  Nisi Shawl.  The great Nisi Shawl, uh, writer of Everfair, um, uses this term of a retro Afrofuturism.

	In this case, I think this is again where my work fits in often is, uh, [tsk] persons who look to the past but imbue the past and imbue people of African descent, Black people in the past, with futuristic elements.  And so we’re thinking for instance of including Black people in things like steampunk because steampunk, of course, though it’s the past, it’s a past that never was.  And often the technologies that exist in that past, while they are past, they also are much more futuristic than we have, right?  You can have sentient machines in, in steampunk and different things that – for forms of, um, of human cybernetics that we don’t have or a-, air ships that function in ways that, that our world, [laughter] they haven’t figured out yet even though it’s this, it’s this, uh, it’s this retro, uh, type of technology.  And so a good word for that is – that I’ve seen used [in 7:02] Nisi Shawl is retrofuturistic.  In a sense, I think some of my works and her works deal with this retro Afrofuturism.  So it’s a more complex look at fut-, Afrofuturism but it shows me how the genre can have, uh, different avenues and different ways to be thought of.  Yeah. [clicking]

Grace Chun:	[7:17] Can you share a little bit about how you started writing?

Phenderson Clark:	Hm.  So I think, um – I, I, I mean, I was always – I guess because one thing that happened is because I was – I said my, my mom who would take us to the [laughter] libraries and we would just sit and devour things.  It’s that I think, uh, after you read a whole lot, I don’t know if this [inaudible 7:37] for everybody but for me, I, I read so much, I was like I wanna take my hand at that.  And so I think from the time I was a kid, I would just write stories or I’d make up my little comic books.  And mostly they were for me, they were for my sister.  We would share these things.  And then I think by middle and high school, it was for friends.  But I, I admittedly did not think about writing seriously.  I didn’t think about writing seriously even as I was going through college, right? [tsk] I was not a writing major.  I did not take creative writing classes.  And I think part of that has to do with, uh, the time I was growing up.  Did not have social media and those things and I just honestly did not see Black writers.  Right?  I did n-, at least, pardon me, I did not see Black writers of speculative fiction.  And so it wasn’t that I, it wasn’t that I then assumed oh, Black people can’t write that.  It was just that it was not even a part of my mind, say, that, uh, oh, I could grow up and be a writer of speculative fiction.  It just wasn’t there.

	I don’t think it was really until my later years of college that I started thinking like about maybe I could write speculative fiction.  Maybe that’s something I can do.  And still it was just something I might do for myself or on the side.  And I think, uh, sometime then, like literally in my very late collegiate years, I started taking [my hand of 8:51] thinking how to write seriously about speculative fiction.  And it took many years before I actually entered the market or [laughter] those kinds of things.  So it, it – I mean, when I look back now on when I would write, I would say it started at a early age but when I would write seriously?  Uh, that came much later in life.  Yeah.

Grace Chun:	Hm. [9:09] What were your like biggest, I guess, influences?

Phenderson Clark:	Hm.  So growing up, again, because unfortunately the greats like Octavia Butler and others, you know, uh, Delany and others, were not even put in front of me. [clicking] I didn’t know they existed.  I did not know those writers [laughter] existed well until I was almost finishing college and [inaudible 9:31].  So thankful now for social media.  People can learn more about these Black writers.  But at the time, I mean, the internet, I think I was finishing college and it was, you know, becoming big.  And so that’s how I heard about them, actually interacting with people in early forms of internet social media on, on things called listservs, which [inaudible 9:47] think exist anymore.  Um. [tsk] But when I was growing up, it was – I mean, my influences were often things I was watching, the more popular, uh, forms a speculative fiction, um, and the things I was reading.  People like, um, Madeleine L'Engle’s, uh, works.  Um.  Um.  I can’t think of her…

Grace Chun:	Wrinkle in Time.

Phenderson Clark:	Wrinkle in Time.  Thank [laughter] you.  Yes, of course.  A Wrinkle in Time.  I think it was like this profound influence.  I was blown away by those books and I read them at a young age.  I mean, you know, I’d read other writers.  I read Tolkien.  I think I was probably really influenced by Tolkien.  For good or bad, I was influenced by Tolkien.  I, I was a big fantasy person, so I read all these.  People [inaudible 10:27] these Forgotten Realms books that were based on D&D.  And, you know, I read like the Margaret Weis books of Dragonlance and so I, I was really big into fantasy, so I read those.  I read Frank Herbert’s Dune.  And so [tsk] there were all these influences and what’s interesting is none a those things sparked me to write.  Right?  I, I think that when I first started writing, uh, interestingly enough, like I said, it was later in collegiate years and it was actually like a mix of politics and, uh, trying to mix politics with speculative fiction.  So my early speculative fiction always has to do with something – it was a little didactic [laughter] and it always had to do with something social.  And I think the influence on that was probably somebody like Ray Bradbury…

Grace Chun:	Hm.

Phenderson Clark:	…you know, who I grew up, uh, on books like The Illustrated Man, for instance, and The Martian Chronicles and, um, you know, and then my mother’s love for Twilight Zone.  And I was like how do I translate that to talk about the Black experience?  And little did I know even when I started that, I was like oh, I’m, I’m doing this and who’s done this before? [Inaudible 11:24] Black writers who’ve been doing that for a very long time, right?  And so it was a way that I was following that tradition without even knowing the tradition was there. [clicking] But when I did learn that tradition was there, then I devoured that stuff, you know, I went back and I read everything from Du Bois who is writing things o-, onward, right, and to, uh, see how various, uh, people of African descent, Black people, have, have looked at this, so yeah.

Grace Chun:	[11:49] Do you feel like there’s a sense of community within this genre?

Phenderson Clark:	You know, I do. [clicking] And i-, and it’s really interesting you say that within Afrofuturism or even larger within the Black speculative world. [tsk] There’s a way that it kind of exists [laughter] on its – it kind of exists in its own space even with the advent of social media.  Um.  W-, when I, when I – I, I had left writing for a while, speculative fiction writing.  I came back to it but when I came back to it, it was within these online Black spaces, right?  It was full of Black creative – these, uh, Black and men and women who were, you know, uh, thinking and creating and sharing and had ideas.  And a lot of’m were [inaudible 12:26] self-published and, you know, they were just, they were just all there.  Some of’m [inaudible 12:30] to do movies, uh, some of’m were doing screenplays or they wanted to put on different performances.  And it was just this huge community there and it was really interesting.  By the time I even learned about the larger market, like the other speculative fiction community that we think of when we think of awards like Nebulas and, you know, th-, that was like another world.  The Black space was its own contained world, so there was a sense a community.  But that sense a community almost didn’t – i-, it didn’t even interact, bridge, or overlap [laughter] with the larger speculative world, which is still a problem, right?  Uh. [Inaudible 13:03] speculative world, uh, seems at times completely apart from, uh, the Black speculative world.

	And so I definitely think there – yeah, there’s been a sense of community in that sense because for one, if you’re in the larger speculative world, well, there’s, there’s still not a lot [laughter] of Black – there’s, there’s not so many Black speculative fict-, fiction writers in the larger world that we can hold a conference, right, that wouldn’t be like a room or two.  And so, yeah, there’s a sense that, you know, when you meet, you – I would go and look for – in the major magazines, I would very, you know, non-politically correctly, uh, look up people’s names, say I think that name might be Black.  Let me see if I can find this person.  I’d spend long times hunting who they were to figure out if that story sounded like it came from a Black person, it addressed something.  And so, you know, i-, in the sense, there’s a community ‘cause you’re always looking for someone [inaudible 13:53] so, yeah, I’d say there’s a sense a community, yeah.

Grace Chun:	Um. [13:57] So from your perspective, what does Afrofuturism offer society in this moment?

Phenderson Clark:	[tsk] Oh.  In this moment. [laughter] Where do we live in a moment?  I, you know, I think some people have pointed out that – especially people like Butler, um, who warned of – I guess used dystopia to [warn futures 14:16] that – people have pointed out that she was like – she was warning of this moment, right?  She predicted some of the things that we’re facing now in many ways.  Uh.  And I, I think that’s probably indicative of a lot of the Black experience like being the canary in the coal mine. [tsk] Uh, seeing the various things whether it’s, uh, whether it’s, uh, [inaudible 14:38] thinking of environmental racism or, uh, looking at, um, i-, inequality within justice systems or looking at, um, the, uh, looking at the lack of democracy in politics.  You can say that, uh, people of Black descent – people of African descent [laughter], uh, lived these experiences and warned and warned and warned and it’s often not until it explodes and people are now threatened with the idea of, uh, auth-, auth-, um, you know, an autocratic-type government or they’re seeing, uh, a further erosion of the environment and things that people pay attention to.  And I think that a lot of early Afrofuturistic writers, you know, did this.  They kind of warned of these possibilities or they talked about the issues of race and diversity and, uh, and, and various other social issues that needed to be addressed.  And I think there’s a way Afrofuturism offers that.

	But I think Afrofuturism also at the same time offers us the possibility to think about how to resist that kind of, uh, future, um, how to form resistance, uh, while you’re living that type of experience and as well, how to imagine a future where that’s not the case.  How to imagine utopian future, right?  Or if not fully utopian, at least a future where, uh, those who resist win and those other forces are not triumphant.  And I think, uh, people who might despair, uh, in this moment or what [laughter] have you, I think that Afrofuturism offers that possibility, right?  Whether it’s through, uh, music, writing, or what have you.  I think of somebody like Janelle Monáe for instance who said look, the future is going to have [tsk] problems.  It will have robots and androids [laughter] who, uh, face discrimination but they also dance. [laughter] Right?  They, they find different ways to create and what have you and, and live lives.  And I think, uh, uh, y-, you think about people, you know, various – I’m thinkin’ about musicians like George Clinton and others who some people say have aspects a Afrofuturism.  They say hey, look, in the future, uh, Black people will be there.  However that future is going to be, they’ll be there and they’ll be creating and doing all these other things as well, so I think that’s also something it has to offer, yeah.

Grace Chun:	[16:43] Can you share a little bit about the – some of your published work?

Phenderson Clark:	[tsk] Uh, sure.  Um. [tsk] So let’s see.  Uh.  Oh, I guess I’ll talk about the one that won awards. [laughter] Uh.  One of them is called, um – [tsk] so I, I wrote a, a novella.  It’s called The Black God's Drums.  And it is what I would consider that retro Afrofuturism, right?  It imagines, uh, this, uh, late 19th century New Orleans where, uh, the civil war, uh, never ended.  There’s simply an armistice and so New Orleans is a free city.  All the rest of the United States remains divided.  Uh.  Slavery still exist in the confederacy, uh, though it’s been transferred from plantation fields to now factory.  And it brings in some of those dystopian elements, the steampunk, and bring in such as the use of chemicals and what have you, uh, to control populations.  And at the same time, it also has this notion of, uh, Black triumphalism, uh, because the story, um, rewrites, uh, parts of the Haitian revolution.  In this, uh, retelling, uh, the revolution is still successful but it’s, it’s more successful beyond anyone’s imagining, right?  Haiti is a full empire, they have freed various other, um, [tsk] enslaved people and, uh, thanks to them, there are things like airships and all of these things, uh, and, and various different inventions in the world.  And so, you know, that work tries to, tries to give that bridge of the, uh, of, of both the dystopian aspect of futurism, this retrofuturism, but also something utopian and, and triumphant and the two are often, uh, I should say, in conflict within the [work 18:28].

	And it stars a – th-, the heroine of the, of the story is a young protagonist by the name of, uh, Jacquelin who goes by the nickname Creeper.  Uh.  She lives in New Orleans and, uh, she finds out th-, the confederates are trying to use a secret weapon or at least obtain a secret weapon called the Black God’s drums, uh, and she has to go meet a, an airship captain from the West Indies, uh, an-, an-, a Black woman who’s an airship captain, and she’s trying to find the information to, to her and – uh, get this information to her and the 2 of them will then have to, uh, set about an adventure to perhaps save the city from – New Orleans from destruction.  Oh, and also the protagonist has an African goddess who lives in her head because why not?  So that’s, that’s one of them, yeah.

Grace Chun:	[19:17] And I think you’ve also wr-, written short stories?

Phenderson Clark:	[clicking] Yes.  Mm-hm.  So [tsk] [inaudible 19:23] I’m tryin’ to think of like any a my short stories a [laughter] Afrofuturism.  I do have one, uh, that I, I would consider really an Afrofuturistic story.  Um.  It was written a long time ago and it is called Wings for Icarus and it’s actually about a young [clicking] boy who is trying to redeem his father’s memory.  His father was an advent-, a-, an inventor who is named after Elijah McCoy, an actual [laughter] Black inventor.  And I based it on – the story came because my father, uh, who is a welder but also has his own inventing mind, uh, just a natural inventing mind, was, uh, trimming a, a palm tree in one of our – at our house and he fell off – out of it and broke his arm.  He’s fine.  Uh.  He’s fine.  He’s, he’s fine now.  His arm is better.  But I came up with this story where things did not turn out as well [laughter] for this Black inventor who tries to fly like Icarus with his wings made of a, a, a modern type of, uh, metal [tsk] and polymer and it does not work.  And the story’s basically about this, uh, young boy who’s trying to redeem his father’s memory ‘cause people think he was crazy.  He jumped off a cliff, uh, trying to fly and he’s going to [clicking] – he basically repairs the broken wings that his father had made and he tries to fly as well, so it’s, it’s, it’s a bit about memory, it’s about mobility, and it has that element of futurism [tsk], uh, and the, the Black inventor in it as well, yeah.

Grace Chun:	Mm-hm. [20:50] How do you decide, um – ‘cause – so you’ve written novellas and…

Phenderson Clark:	Mm-hm.

Grace Chun:	…short stories.  Is that typically the form that you like to go for or…?

Phenderson Clark:	Well, [laughter] a-, actually, um, I started off as a, as a fantasy novel writer.  Anybody knows anything about fantasy novel writers, I mean, they’re huge, huge, gigantic tomes and, uh, I, when I first started writing, it was to write these I would call them short stories but they were really novellas. [laughter] And then my other thing was really to write huge novels.  Uh.  I had to actually go back and train myself how to write actual short stories. [tsk] And, uh, some a my novellas end up, uh, like The Black God's Drums, started off as a short story and it blossomed into a novella and so, you know, it’s really funny.  In the past few years, that’s where a lotta my success has been, in publishing short stories [tsk] and novellas but I’m really a novel writer at heart.  And so, um, I’m finding myself returning, uh, back to that long form, uh, again, so we’ll see what happens. [laughter]

Grace Chun:	[21:51] Is there anything you’re currently working on?

Phenderson Clark:	Yeah, so I have, uh, 2 things.  I have, um, [tsk] a novella called Ring Shout, which is – the best way to think of it is an – it’s set in, uh, 1922 [tsk], uh, Georgia.  Actually, it’s set mostly in not Athens, Georgia, but, um, [tsk] Macon, Georgia.  And the – I don’t wanna give the full premise of the story but it, it has to do with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, The Birth of a Nation and such things, and the best way to describe it is a type of s-, Black southern gothic, uh, horror story but also fantasy, right?  Th-, there’s sword fighting [laughter] in it but there’re also monsters.  Uh.  And so that is a novella that’s going to be out in November [tsk], uh, from Tor.  Um.  And I am also working on a full-length novel.  Well, it’s actually done.  It’s just going through editing.  Uh.  Set in the world of another novella I’ve written called, um, th-, um, A Dead Djinn in Cairo.  And it’s also – this is also a retrofuturistic, uh, uh, imagining, uh, A Dead Djinn in Cairo.  I also wrote a second, a second novella.  A short story first called A Dead Djinn in Cairo, then a novella called The Haunting of Tram Car 015, or tram car 15, how people, however people wanna say it.  And both of those are set in a, an alternate, uh, world, an alternate Cairo, Egypt, um, that is not colonized and where a Sudanese inventor [tsk] has, uh, created these various, um, machines that have brought djinn back into the world.  Right?  And so [laughter]…

Grace Chun:	Mm-hm.

Phenderson Clark:	…i-, it, it has a bit of – it has airships and it has technology, steampunk and dieselpunk technology.  But it also has magical creatures and magic and sorcery [tsk] that’s also a part of it in this enchanted, uh, but also somewhat futuristic, uh, 1912 Cairo.  And so, uh, I’m writing the first novel in that world.  Uh.  I can’t give the title away yet but it is coming starring, uh, its main character, an agent by the name of Fatma.  Yeah.

Grace Chun:	Thank you for sharing.

Phenderson Clark:	Yeah.

Grace Chun:	Uh.  I guess switching over, um, to discussion about, um, Zora Neale Hurston.

Phenderson Clark:	Mm-hm.

Grace Chun:	[24:18] In your mind, what is the link between Zora Neale Hurston and Afrofuturism?

Phenderson Clark:	Hm.  That’s a good one.  Um.  It’s funny.  I was, I was introduced to Zora Neale Hurston in college, um, from my, uh, from, uh, my – Dr. [Holt 24:35] at, uh, at my, uh, [laughter] at my university introduced me to Their Eyes Were Watching God and I was introduced to the works of Zora Neale Hurston.  I guess it was a way – it’s interesting ‘cause Ring Shout in some ways, the story I was just saying, was influenced by someone like Zora Neale Hurston [tsk] because, um, the idea actually came from r-, from, uh, me reading parts of the WPA narratives, uh, the Works Progress Association narratives, uh, these narratives of former – of ex-slaves and it’s Zora Neale Hurston who was instrumental in beginning that by interviewing, uh, ex-slaves, uh, here in Florida, right?  And so I know she influences [laughter] me definitively that way.  Um.  But, you know, I, I think there’s a way that, uh, that, that her influence is there because I think of her in the 1920s and I think of, uh, her starting – you know, having the, the Black literati, uh, that she – group that she forms with others like Langston Hughes and others, um, and I think of, you know, them putting out their magazine, uh, Fire!!.  Th-, there’s a way where that magazine in itself was trying to imagine a new type of Black. [Inaudible 25:42] trying to think of Black people as modern people, right?  It was really this focus on modernity and to imagine how Black people exist in this, in these modern spaces, particularly with the time and h-, we would come to call Harlem Renaissance.

	And so I, I think that she’s definitively instructive there, right?  And so I think there’s a way in which she – e-, even in her anthropol-, a-, a-, anthropology work and looking at, uh, at Black culture and Black cultures of the past.  There’s always this way in which even though she was talking about the past, she brought that past into the present, right?  And I think there’s a way that Afrofuturism, as much as it looks forward, it also doesn’t ignore that past.  It’s very Sankofa in some ways.  And I think, I think, uh, Zora Neale Hurston sits at that crossroads.  Yeah.

Grace Chun:	[26:31] Do you think the festival’s engagement with Afrofuturism continues her legacy?

Phenderson Clark:	Certainly.  I think if the, I think if the festival [inaudible 26:40] [laughter] Afrofuturism, yeah.  I think that – uh, yeah. [You always 26:43] wonder like what would a writer, uh, think who, uh, you know, is gone now?  What would they make of Afrofuturism, you know?  And I, I think it’s, I think Afrofuturism’s, uh, embrace of so many possibilities and so many different avenues and daring at times to simply just be outside the box would be something that I would – I could see somebody like Zora Neale Hurston embracing, definitely, yeah.

Grace Chun:	[27:08] And what can contemporary Afrofuturists learn from Zora Neale Hurston and early generations of Black thinkers?

Phenderson Clark:	[clicking] Um.  You know, I think about people like Zora Neale Hurston.  I think about people like Pauline Hopkins who even earlier in 1903 is writing these – writing books about finding lost futuristic, uh – lost ancient but futuristic, like retrofuturist, uh, cities in Ethiopia and all this.  And I think that, um, there’s a way in w-, th-, there’s a way that, uh, as, as writers of, of s-, Black speculative fiction, it’s kinda like like I said when I grew up, I didn’t know, uh, them existed and now’s there access to them in ways that didn’t exist when I was younger.  And I would say really knowing, uh, what they were doing because y-, uh, y-, you’ll be surprised how much what they were talking about informs the now and informs the future.  And you could look at them as almost predictive, right?  But also dealing with the issues of their time.  And I think understanding, for instance, how many of those writers [tsk], you know, if you were someone like Pauline Hopkins in early 1900s, you’re writing against the basic racial terror of the nadir that’s going on and how, uh, they would use r-, writing, this, this writing as this almost type of weapon, right, to fight back against these things.

	And I think there’s a, there’s a great deal to learn there, uh, if you’re a speculative fiction writer in this age trying to find your place and understand where you as a writer fit in especially if you want to say something profound where, w-, where you fit in.  And I think, uh, looking back at what they were doing and putting in the context of the times they were doing it in, uh, I think that’s, that can be really instructive.

Grace Chun:	[tsk] [28:44] So for someone who is new to Afrofuturism, what would you recommend [inaudible 28:50] [laughter] start?

Phenderson Clark:	Oh, where would they start?  I, I would say go listen to some Janelle Monáe. [laughter] [Inaudible 28:55] like people sometimes don’t.  They think of it as just literary but I would say like listen to Janelle Monáe, especially her first album and, and [inaudible 29:03] listen to it, like look at the art she creates for it.  Look at the videos that she creates, right?  And, and think of it almost as a story.  Um.  Go back and listen to some hip hop, especially early hip hop.  Go back and listen to like, you know, “Planet Rock” and things like that and see how they were imagining how hip hop, just by the use of its – of the instruments it was using, right, in creating things like, you know, the various mixers and these things they’re creating and creating turntablism.  Think about how they were trying to utilize these things, uh, these sounds of the instruments of the future and putting them into their music and how that in its own way was futurism.  So there is this way that Afrofuturism already exist in the things that are around us and we’re not thinking about it because sometimes we’re just thinking about it in the literary fashion.  But it already exist in all of these cultural dynamics that, uh, that we need to pay attention to.  Like think of, think of, uh, think of George Clinton, [tsk] you know, somebody like [Inaudible 30:01].  Think of these kind of musicians.  Think of them in an Afrofuturistic context.

	Think about George Clinton’s mother ship and who he’s saying is going to be in space, right?  The pimps [laughter] are going to be in space.  Think of it in, in that, in that wild, uh, way that he’s, he's talking about it where he’s usin’ the profane to talk about the future, which most people had seen as this clean slate in a sense and, you know, it’s going to be sterile and pure.  And he’s like no, it’s going to be funky as he puts it [laughter] and this is what the future is going to be.  Um.  And then, you know, literary-wise, uh, I suppose – [tsk] I mean, like I said, many of those older writers I would say to look at.  Um.  But also, I think people have put out some, uh – I, I think there are great new writers.  I don’t know why I’m blanking at the moment.  But somebody like, uh, Cadwell Turnbull’s recent work, whose – I’m sorry, I can’t – sorry, Cadwell, I can’t think of your – think of the name [laughter] of your book right now but it’s a great book.  It’s, it’s set with the idea of – like we always think of alien invasions, right?  And we’re thinking of alien invasions landing in, uh, [tsk] we’re thinking of alien invasions landing in n-, where do they always land?  They always land in New York or land in L.A.  Right? [Inaudible 31:10] else in the world.  And he has them land, uh, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, right?  This is where they land.  And the things – I mean, th-, that’s, that’s, that’s fascinating, right?

	So think about works like that.  Again, for some reason, I’m blanking on the name ‘cause I’m doing this interview but Cadwell Turnbull.  Maybe somebody’ll [echo in 31:27], mix it in what the name of the book is.  Uh.  And, um, um, of course, I would say if – I guess if you’re really wantin’ to start, um, Sheree Renée Thomas was an editor [tsk] of a book called Dark Matter and it’s an anthology.  And I believe Dark Matter came out, I wanna say, either in the late ‘90s or the early 2000s.  And what’s great about Dark Matter is that it includes many writers like people you would think of as when we think of Afrofuturism, it includes essays on writers.  You know, people like Octavia Butler who were these, you know, foundational books in Afrofuturism.  People like, um, [tsk] like, like Samuel Delany, right, who are also these other figures.  Th-, and they have essays by them or stories written on them but as well includes older stories from W.E.B. Du Bois talking about, you know, comets wiping out humanity in the early 1900s to most modern stories by various, uh, Black writers.  And so it, it pretty much runs the gamut when it comes to ideas of Afrofuturism.  It’s just a good primer just to give you an idea of, uh, where some of these stories come from.  People like George Schuyler and what have you, these older writers.  Uh.  Essays on the entire idea of Afrofuturism and Black speculative fiction as well as stories by more modern writers.  Modern for the time anyway.  It’s, it’s a good starting point.

Grace Chun:	[32:53] Do you feel like the audience for Afrofuturism is growing?

Phenderson Clark:	Yeah, and, you know, I think it was always there. [laughter] Like I said, I, I don’t, I don’t – it’s, it’s like – and we would say it’s growing.  I think it was just always there.  I think it was – I think it’s just oh, here it is now, right?  And it’s getting more publicity now, right?  But I, I don’t think there was ever a time when there wasn’t an audience for it, especially if you’re talkin’ about a Black audience.  Like I said, I always use hip hop as a perfect example.  Hip hop’s been doing Afrofuturism from the jump.  Anybody raised on hip hop is probably already [laughter] ready to, uh, g-, engage in Afrofuturism and they likely already have, right?  And so yeah, definitely.  I-, it, I mean, if it’s already there, then yes, it can only be growing.

Grace Chun:	Um. [33:37] Do you have any final thoughts [inaudible 33:39] you wanna say about Afrofuturism or…?

Phenderson Clark:	Uh.  For anybody out there who’s interested in it and who’s interested in creating it, um, go for it.  I, I, I don’t know that it has any one definition.  I don’t know if it has any one medium.  And so there’re many different ways you can express it, uh, many different ways you can define it.  And so, uh, please, uh, get your creative self out there and, you know, let your flag fly.  That’s it.

Grace Chun:	Thank you.

Phenderson Clark:	No problem.


/ad