In recent years there has been an uptick, if not an actual surge, of the works by fantasy writers of color finally, deservedly, entering the mainstream. These stories are as broad and wide sweeping as the culture itself. From The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton and Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, to N.K. Jemison’s The Fifth Season. Beautiful novels with intricate, fully imagined, complicated characters and worlds.
But, our voices have always been here, in the background, creating stories. Martin Delany, the first African American to attend Harvard Medical school, is credited with writing what is considered the first book of fantasy by a person of color: Blake or the Huts of America in 1857, the story of an escaped slave who travels throughout the Americas, and Cuba in a quest to unite all Blacks against slavery. Imperium in Imperio in 1899 by Sutton Griggs tells the story of two men involved in a secret organization dedicated to eliminating injustice and creating an independent black state inside of Texas. Even the famed civil rights activist, author, and historian W.E.B. Du Bois wrote a piece of science fiction called The Comet, about a post-apocalyptic New York, where the only survivors, and hope for the human race, are a working class black man and a wealthy white woman.
