Black God's Drums Sparknotes

How History is Represented in Afrofuturistic Literature

Afrofuturism is a cultural movement in literature, art, music, etc. that uses futuristic and science fiction elements to explore and honor the forgotten history and experiences of African-American culture. In the literature that uses Afrofuturism, they commonly use fiction and sci-fi, and this essay will cover how The Black God's Drums and Golden Ax use these elements. The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark is set in the Civil war, the main character, Creeper, lives on her own and has a god, Oya, living in her head. Creeper dreams of escaping the war by going live in an airship. The novella alters the past, but still keeps the main aspects of the war, similar to how Golden Ax talks about

Cortez writes about how she doesn’t feel like she belongs in Utah because of the limited diversity, and that includes her writing about her ancestors. She writes about what her ancestors went through to get to Utah, and how she feels out of place because her lineage is never talked about in history. The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark and Golden Ax by Rio Cortez honor the people of the past in different ways, one by using mythical people, and two by using real people from the past.

In The Black God's Drums, early on in the book Creeper is talking to the captain about her goddess and thinks to herself; "The magic of those old Afrikin gods is part of this city, ma maman used to say, buried in its bones and roots with the slaves that built it, making the ground and air and waterways sacred land. Only we forget the names that went with that power we bought over here." (Clark 36-37). This quote emphasizes the unrecognized work that Black people have done in the past. Clark uses mythology here by representing past people as powerful gods that paved the way, and when he says, "buried in its bones and roots with the slaves that built it'' he's making this about how the people of the past have a huge part in how things are today. Using this idea of

Djèlí Clark and Rio Cortez honor the past by using science fiction elements to emphasize Black people's true experiences of traumatic moments in history. Cortez in her poem "Covered Wagon as Spaceship" writes about enslaved Black people who were brought to Utah claiming, "it begins with abduction" (Cortez 4). She uses science fiction to represent her ancestors' past and how it affects her; "I am a child feeling extraterrestrial; whose history, untold, is not enough"(Cortez 4). By saying this she is telling her story, how her ancestors' past of being enslaved, and how they have no place in history, makes her feel like she's "extraterrestrial" and feels like this isn't her world. She doesn't know the history of how she got to Utah because the Black people of the past didn't get the correct place in history. And instead, the traumatic stories of how they were brought to Utah are overlooked. The trauma of slavery is also very overlooked and to draw attention to the damage slavery did Clark creates a gas the white people use to control slaves. This gas is used to emphasize the real oppression enslaved people had to endure. It is called drapeto vapor and it "make[s] it so the slaves don't want to fight no more, don't want to do much of nothing. Just work" (Clark 32). The drapeto gas is an image of how enslaved people would feel. It is a science fiction element that puts into perspective the awful abuse Black people were put through. In the novella, it takes away their free will