'Sixteen tales by bestselling and award-winning authors that explore the Black experience through fantasy, science fiction, and magic. With stories by: Elizabeth Acevedo, Amerie, Patrice Caldwell, Dhonielle Clayton, J. Marcelle Corrie, Somaiya Daud, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Justina Ireland, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, L. L. McKinney, Danielle Paige, Rebecca Roanhorse, Karen Strong, Ashley Woodfolk, and Ibi Zoboi.
'Evoking Beyoncé’s Lemonade for a teen audience, these authors who are truly Octavia Butler’s heirs, have woven worlds to create a stunning narrative that centres Black women and gender nonconforming individuals. A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters in which you cannot help but see yourself reflected. Witches and scientists, sisters and lovers, priestesses and rebels: the heroines of A Phoenix First Must Burn shine brightly. You will never forget them.'
Anthology books are a good way to explore new authors. Most of the time I read an anthology book I come away from the experience with a list of new authors I want to check out, and invariably several books on my wishlist that weren't there before. A Phoenix First Must Burn is probably one of the anthologies that has given me the most new writers I want to read more of. Every story in this collection was great, and most of the stories ended way too soon for me and left me wanting more.
Representation is such a hugely important thing. For those who don’t understand it, it can seem like a forcing of certain groups or minorities into narratives or roles. I’m sure we’ve all seen arguments made before along the lines of ‘these characters are only included to tick a box’, or ‘why make a character gay if it adds nothing to a story’. It’s easy to jump on the offensive when people say things like this, to condemn those kinds of views as homophobic, or racist, or transphobic. It’s easy to see condemnation of inclusion as hatred of minorities.
What might not immediately come to people’s minds is that to some this inclusion seems forced because they’ve never experienced it before. They’ve never has someone in their shows, films, or comics who wasn’t white, or straight, or cis, or able bodied. But the thing that might make them see inclusiveness as tokenism is that they’ve never had to look for people like themselves in the media before. They’ve never been starved of positive representation, so they don’t understand why it’s important.
A Phoenix First Must Burn is amazing in part for giving representation to a voices that are often ignored in the publishing world. Black female voices. It's not hard to see the difference that Black voices have to live with over white writers, the recent #PublishingPaidMe campaign really highlighted how little Black people get paid compared to their white colleagues, especially Black women. Publishers seem more than eager to print and promote work by white writers, but aren't always prepared to take that leap with Black creators. And the amount of reviews I've seen of Black fiction where it's described as being perfect for 'black audiences' instead of just perfect for all audiences is ridiculous. Black voices need to be shared far and wide, they need to be open for all to read and promoted no differently than white voices.
This book take some amazing women of colour and showcases their work. It gives you a small sampling of their styles. It shows you how rich and wonderful, and varied, Black voices can be. And importantly, it doesn't just rely on telling 'Black' stories, stories that are rooted in the history of violence and oppression that Black people have faced. The book gives you pieces that draw on that history yes, but it's also full of science fiction, fantasy, and magic. Giving young Black women a book where they can see people like them in so many wonderful and varied stories and genre's is amazing, and needs to be celebrated.
'Wherein Abigail Fields Recalls Her First Death And, Subsequently, Her Best Life' by Rebecca Roanhorse is a cool western story, one that deals with revenge and loss in a way that doesn't glorify the act, but still gives the lead character some kind of emotional resolution. 'Melie' by Justina Ireland is a great fantasy story that shows the ingenuity and intellect of its lead character, as well a giving readers a cool take on dragons. 'All The Time In The World' by Charlotte Nicole Davis is a fun tale about a young woman discovering amazing new powers to stop time, as well as her falling in love.
I picked these stories out of a hat, and could spend so much time gushing over them, and ever story in this collection, but don't want to spoil too much of the experience for anyone. But these examples help to show the range of stories on offer. One is a gritty western story, another is a fantastical story with magic and dragons, and another is a story about super powers and gay love. But despite being so different from each other all the stories in this book share the common thread of highlighting how amazing Black female writers and characters are.
The book also has a lot of queer representation in it too, and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself I adored how so many of the stories were about same sex attraction, and treated that as nothing different from heterosexual stories. They didn't try to make the queer content stand out or seem special, but treated it as a regular part of life. And I loved that.
A Phoenix First Must Burn is a wonderful book. It tells amazing stories, and brings together so many brilliant writers. If you're looking for new authors to check out please pick up this book, as I'm sure there's going to be several in here that will capture your heart. And if you want to help support Black voices in publishing buy a copy too. Let's all fight for more positive representation in our literature, and push for more diverse, amazing voices like these.
No comments:
Post a Comment