Short story collection a must-read
AUTHOR: Janelle Monáe PUBLISHER: Harper Voyager PRICE: R393 on Loot.co.za
THE desire to take a music project beyond the confines of an album has driven the career direction of so many creatively ambitious musicians. From classic studio films, such as The Who’s (1975) or Prince’s
(1984), to extended music video projects, such as Beyoncé’s in 2016, the music-to-film pipeline, when done successfully, can establish an artist’s auteur status.
American singer, rapper and actress Janelle Monáe, who made her film debut in 2016 with the award-winning and critically acclaimed
is no stranger to this concept. Her Grammy-nominated third album, the joyously vibrant collection of pop bangers was accompanied by an “emotion picture”. The Hugo Award-winning short film brought to life the fully formed world around Monáe’s record, introducing audiences to a dystopian near-future surveillance state where queer people, people of colour and all who don’t conform, are considered “dirty computers” and hunted down to be corrected. It is this world which Monáe builds on in her first book The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories from Dirty Computer, a collection of short stories that explore the power of memory in liberation.
The collection is a collaboration between Monáe and several writers known for their work in speculative fiction and science fiction, including Yohanca Delgado, Eve L Ewing, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore and Sheree Renée Thomas. It is a credit to the editors and Monáe’s strong vision that the collection does not fall at that first hurdle. If anything, the varied voices play into the book’s concept, dipping in and out of different characters and worldviews to paint a larger picture of the impact of the all-seeing authoritarian state, New Dawn.
In the era of New Dawn, difference is a crime. Technology is weaponised to watch a citizen’s every move, and memory is treated as a threat to the new order and wiped clean with the drug Nevermind. The allegories to our modern-day fears of technology’s dominance in our lives and the many ways history is rewritten to benefit those in power are evident throughout the text.
is fixated on that same audience – a reminder for those who’ve ever been told they don’t fit in that there’s a world beyond this harsh one and a set of tools that can help them get there.
In the first story,
(which Monáe co-wrote with Johnson), we are introduced to Seshet, the director librarian of a city called Little Delta and a rare black face in the upper echelons of New Dawn who presides over its authoritarian regime by day, cracking down on Doc Young and his illegal street remixes of Nevermind. At night, she seeks out the thrill of life beyond the rules and, after meeting her transgender girlfriend Alethia 56934 at a dive bar, Seshet begins to uncover more of her past before she became the “queen of the white city”.
Even those who have escaped the regimented world of New Dawn remain haunted by the horrors they witnessed, as evidenced in the story co-written with Lore, which follows the rebellious Jane 57821, who broke free from the regime when she chose to remember. Now hiding out in the
Pynk Hotel, an-all female commune in the desert, Jane battles against being taken over by memories of her old life and the threat of being found by New Dawn. The women convene in groups called “chords” and are portrayed as radical, freethinking artists just like many of the other protagonists throughout the anthology. In this world, artists, musicians, painters, designers are the physical embodiments of freedom and conversely are treated with suspicion by the regime.
The elasticity of time is a common theme throughout the collection, as
(co-written by Ewing) considers how unlimited time could aid women of colour who are so often the most overworked and under-resourced. Elsewhere, (co-written by Delgado) considers the well-trodden time travel storyline in which Amber, whose late father gave her a stone that can turn back time, weighs the potential collateral damage of meddling.
The Afrofuturist collection feeds both Monáe’s fan base, who will be hungry to delve deeper into her work, and sci-fi fans looking for another book in the burgeoning black speculative fiction genre. One point to note is that some stories are given more focus than others. Just as you’re getting into or the section ends abruptly. Although another 100 pages wouldn’t have been possible, I would have enjoyed delving deeper into the premise, the lives and the dreams of our main characters. If anything, showing the many ways that dreaming equals liberation for marginalised people, is a key takeaway from the anthology. Dreaming helps characters find themselves and envision new ways of being so that they can proudly declare, as Monáe sings in her song
“I am not America's nightmare, I am the American dream.”
Stephanie Phillips music journalist and musician, and author of
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