Must-Read Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism Books

The first mainstream superhero of African descent, Black Panther has attracted readers of all races and colors who see in the King of Wakanda reflections of themselves. Storytellers from across the African Diaspora—some already literary legends, others who are rising stars—have created for this collection original works inspired by the world of the Panther and its inhabitants. With guest stars including Storm, Monica Rambeau, Namor, and Jericho Drumm, these are stories of yesterday and today, of science and magic, of faith and love.

There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature who some might call monstrous but, in reality, is anything but, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has emerged to hunt a true monster, and the shadow of something grim that lurks in town. This award-winning novel from a rising-star author asks: What really makes a monster, and how do you save the world from something if no one will admit it exists?

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James’s Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary named Tracker is hired to find a missing child. Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, James has written a novel unlike anything that’s come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that’s also an ambitious, involving read.

Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham have brought together this collection of work—images, photos, essays, memes, dialogues, recipes, tweets, poetry, and more—to tell the story of the radical, imaginative, provocative, and gorgeous world that Black creators are bringing forth today.

Parable of the Sower is the Butlerian odyssey of one woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. The time is 2025. Small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of people addicted to a drug that activates a desire to burn, rape, and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the hereditary trait of “hyperempathy”—which causes her to feel others’ pain as her own—sets off on foot into the unknown.

Anwuli Okwudili prefers to be called AO. To her, these initials have always stood for Artificial Organism. AO has never really felt…natural, and that’s putting it lightly. The world views her as freakish, unnatural, even the work of the devil, but AO embraces all that she is: A woman with a ton of major and necessary body augmentations. This fast-paced, relentless journey of tribe, destiny, body, and the wonderland of technology revels in the fact that the future sometimes isn’t so predictable. Even the unaccepted.

In this blockbuster fantasy series fate binds two Black teenagers together as they journey into a magical jungle to hunt down a vicious monster. But it quickly becomes unclear whether they are the hunters or the hunted…

It is a time of calamity in the city’s Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector in the history of the department, is at the center of it. In the department you are either an Empiricist, who works by the book, or an Intuitionist, who can divine any defects. When a new elevator goes into total freefall on Lila Mae’s watch, chaos ensues. But as an Intuitionist, she is never wrong. When Lila Mae goes underground to investigate the crash, she will uncover a secret that will change her life forever.

The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky. In war-torn Nigeria, survival becomes the only way of life. Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more. Their lives have been marked by violence and political unrest. Still, they dream of peace, of hope, of a future together. And they’re willing to fight an entire war to get there…

Karen Lord is one of today’s most brilliant young talents. Her science fiction, like that of predecessors Ursula K. Le Guin and China Miéville, combines star-spanning plots, deeply felt characters, and incisive social commentary. With The Galaxy Game, Lord presents a gripping adventure that showcases her dazzling imagination as never before.

Through essays by some of hip-hop’s most interesting thinkers, theorists, journalists, writers, emcees, and DJs, Boogie Down Predictions embarks on a quest to understand the connections between time, representation, and identity within hip-hop culture and what that means for the culture at large. Introduced by Ytasha L. Womack, author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, this book explores these temporalities, possible pasts, and further futures from a diverse, multilayered, interdisciplinary perspective.

The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy, then and now.

In the walled city of Kos, corrupt mages can magically call forth sin from a sinner in the form of sin-beasts—lethal creatures spawned from feelings of guilt. Taj is the most talented of the aki, young sin-eaters indentured by the mages to slay the sin-beasts. But Taj’s livelihood comes at a terrible cost. When he kills a sin-beast, a tattoo of the beast appears on his skin while the guilt of committing the sin appears on his mind. Most aki are driven mad by the process, but Taj manages to survive, for now… Author Tochi Onyebuchi delivers an unforgettable series opener packed with dark magic and thrilling action. Beasts Made of Night is a gritty Nigerian-influenced fantasy.

In her Hugo- and Nebula-winning novella, Nnedi Okorafor introduced us to Binti, a young Himba girl with the chance of a lifetime: to attend the prestigious Oomza University. But everything changes when the jellyfish-like Medusae attack Binti’s spaceship, leaving her the only survivor. Now, Binti must fend for herself, alone on a ship full of the beings who murdered her crew, with five days until she reaches her destination…Collected now for the first time in omnibus form—and introducing a new Binti story—follow Binti’s journey in this groundbreaking sci-fi trilogy.

The Black Panther is not just a super hero; as King T’Challa, he is also the monarch of the hidden African nation of Wakanda. This seminal new anthology includes the Black Panther’s 1966 origin tale and the entirety of the critically acclaimed “Panther’s Rage” storyline from his 1970s solo series.

Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler experienced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction storyteller whose novels continue to challenge and delight readers years after her death.

NoViolet Bulawayo’s bold new novel follows the fall of the Old Horse, the long-serving leader of a fictional country, and the drama that follows for a rumbustious nation of animals on the path to true liberation. Inspired by the unexpected fall by coup in November 2017 of Robert G. Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s president for nearly four decades, Glory shows a country’s imploding, narrated by a chorus of animal voices that unveil the ruthlessness required to uphold the illusion of absolute power and the imagination and bulletproof optimism to overthrow it completely.

Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there … The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. Into this disaster zone comes a young man—poet, lover, and adventurer—known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.

In Constructing a Nervous System, critic and memoirist Margo Jefferson shatters her self into pieces and recombines them into a new and vital apparatus on the page, fusing the criticism that she is known for, fragments of the family members she grieves for, and signal moments from her life, as well as the words of those who have peopled her past and accompanied her in her solitude, dramatized here like never before.

In Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Sogolon, the Moon Witch proved a worthy adversary to Tracker as they clashed across a mythical African landscape in search of a mysterious boy who disappeared. In Moon Witch, Spider King, Sogolon takes center stage and gives her own account of what happened to the boy, and how she plotted and fought, triumphed and failed as she looked for him. It is a fascinating novel that explores power, personality, and the places where they overlap.

Life is comfortable for twelve-year-old T’Challa in his home of Wakanda, an isolated, technologically advanced African nation. But as conflict brews near Wakanda, T’Challa’s father makes a startling announcement: he’s sending T’Challa to school in America. This is no prestigious private academy—he’s been enrolled at South Side Middle School in the heart of Chicago. When strange things begin happening around school, T’Challa sets out to uncover the source. But what he discovers in the process is far more sinister than he could ever have imagined. In order to protect his friends, T’Challa must take on the mantle of a hero, setting him on the path to becoming the Black Panther.