With faculty facilitator Dr. Ikea Johnson | English, Communications and Media

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"Afrofuturism expresses notions of Black identity, agency and freedom through art, creative works and activism that envision liberated futures for Black life." - National Museum of African American History and Culture

“Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic that combines science-fiction, history and fantasy to explore the African American experience and aims to connect those from the black diaspora with their forgotten African ancestry.”- Tate Modern

If you loved The Giver by Lois Lowry, then you will definitely find this one interesting!

Yetu holds the memories for her people—water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners—who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one—the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu.

Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities—and discovers a world her people left behind long ago.

Yetu will learn more than she ever expected to about her own past—and about the future of her people. If they are all to survive, they’ll need to reclaim the memories, reclaim their identity—and own who they really are. (Goodreads)

Inspired by a song produced by the rap group Clipping for the This American Life episode “We Are In The Future,” The Deep is vividly original and uniquely affecting.