Afrofuturism and Black Panther

[tbonejenkins]

Last week, Twitter sort of exploded (because it's always exploding one way or another) thanks to Nnedi Okorafor's tweets regarding Afrofuturism. I'm...not...real...sure on how I feel about it. Confusion mostly, because I really don't know enough to add much to the conversation. What I can do is list some of the responses. 

Mikki Kendall's got a thread here.

K. Tempest Bradford's has another thread here.

Troy Wiggins got a blog post on it here.

One thing stood out in my mind: Nnedi kept saying we need to talk about this due to the Black Panther movie coming out. I didn't get it until I read Troy's previous post "Critical Conversations: Marvel's Black Panther" which began to put it into perspective for me. I wonder if this isn't so much who is gets to define Afrofuturism, but how can black american writers honor our roots in our creative work without it descending into cultural appropriation. Which, yeah, that's a way, way bigger cultural conversation that needs to happen between Black Americans, Africans, and Blacks of the Diaspora. 

I'll keep updating this, mostly for my own reading, but if anyone has anything to add, feel free to let me know in the comments.