Feminist Africa has a new issue centered on gender, sexuality, and African conceptions of the future.

The issue was edited by University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué. Her introduction to the issue is a beautiful account of key debates about the representation of African futures in literature and art. What is Afrofuturism? How does it differ from African Futurism or Africanfuturism? Ultimately, she links these questions about the future to gender and sexuality.

how does the African Futurist genre (re)imagine gender norms, sexual identities, and issues of feminism on the continent? The second is: does African Futurism have the transformative power that people on the continent attribute to it, particularly concerning gender norms and relations?

The issue includes essays, fiction, book reviews, and more. One of the key highlights of the collection is the featured exhibition titled “The Afrofuturist Village” by Masiyaleti Mbewe, which showcases photos, text, and videos of “the different identities, diverse cultures, and languages that might exist in the Afrofuture.”  Kelsey Ann McFaul’s essay is fascinating for the ways it redefines Africanfuturism, which she argues is more than just African science fiction. It is a method of storytelling and literary criticism “that centers African ways of being and thinking.”

Feminist Africa is a African feminist journal that publishes work centered around African postcolonial experience. The new issue is a significant contribution to timely conversations about African literary and artistic practices.

See below for the list of articles and go here to read the new issue, which is available for free.

Editorial

“Gender and Sexuality in African Futurism” by Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué

Feature Articles 

“How to Save the World from Aliens, Yet Keep Their Infrastructure”: Repurposing the “Master’s House” in The Wormwood Trilogy by Jenna N. Hanchey and Godfried Asante

When the Lagoons Remember: An Afroqueer Futurist Reading of “Blue Ecologies of Agitation” by Kwame Edwin Out

“One Foot on the Other Side”: An Africanfuturist Reading of Irenosen Okojie’s Butterfly Fish (2015) and Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018)  by Kelsey Ann McFaul

Haunted Airports and Sexual Anxieties in Nana Nyarko Boateng’s “Swallowing Ice”  by Delali Kumavie

Africanfuturism and the Reframing of Gender in the Fiction of Nnedi Okorafor by Arit Oku

Standpoint 

The Liquid Space where African Feminism and African Futurism Meet by Minna Salami

Fiction 

Land of My Dreams by Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi

Exhibition 

The Afrofuturist Village by Masiyaleti Mbewe

Reviews  

“Liberation is Necessarily an Act of Culture”: A Review of Spirit Desire by Luam Kidane

Methodologies in Caribbean Research on Gender and Sexuality by Sylvia Tamale

Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular Femininity and Transnational Culture   by Rosemary Oyinlola Popool