“I HAVE ALWAYS been into superheroes and comic books,” says Walidah Imarisha when we meet up at Coffeehouse-Five on N Killingsworth. Perhaps best known for her writing (everything from poetry to criticism), teaching (at Portland State University), and her public scholarship on race in Oregon, Imarisha’s now putting a social justice lens on science fiction. As co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, out now from Oakland’s AK Press, she’s also written a story for the anthology, about a “grumpy” black angel.
“When I was growing up, all I had was Storm from the X-Men who looked like me,” says Imarisha. “She’s supposedly the second-in-command but she’s very Uhura [from Star Trek]. She’s very underutilized.”
So when she and fellow writer Adrienne Maree Brown signed on to edit Octavia’s Brood, named for science-fiction luminary Octavia E. Butler, Imarisha wanted to create a black female superhero. But it turns out it’s pretty difficult to write a superhero who isn’t inherently fascist.
“Superheroes by definition are these very elitist ideologies,” she explains. “You have superpowers either because you had money to buy them—Batman—or you were born with these superpowers or you got mutated by some spider or whatever—but you’re better, you’re super.”
Imarisha had done what many sci-fi writers have, from Joss Whedon to The Hunger Games‘ Suzanne Collins. She’d written a character you don’t normally see taking power in mainstream sci-fi. But instead of subverting the dominant superhero narrative, Imarisha realized she’d merely reinforced it. Her heroine had become “a regular superhero.”
“It’s not enough for me just to put a black woman in this role,” she says. “I need to re-envision the role itself.”
A grumpy black angel? You mean Michael from Lost as he appears on Constantine?