Medicine and Ethics in Black Womens Speculative Fiction [Hardcover]

Speculative fiction often shows the complicated and rather fraught history of medicine as it relates to black women. Through prominent writers like Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, and Nalo Hopkinson, Jones highlights how personal experiences of illness and disease frequently reflect larger societal sicknesses in connection to race and gender.

This is a work that invites all to 'eat salt together,' to understand the historical and sociopolitical complexities of black female difference that have affected and infected the national body politic. Jones's prescription is clear and fresh: black women's speculative fiction offers alternate epistemologies and methodologies for good physical and spiritual health. - Valerie Lee, Professor of English, The Ohio State University, USA

Esther L. Jones shows how works of speculative fiction by Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, and Nalo Hopkinson offer theoretical insight into the misuses of medical science in authorizing social classifications such as race and gender by turning them into ostensibly biological categories. These works remind us to pay attention to how the invaluable insights of science can at the same time reinforce social hierarchies and, in so doing, offer potent challenges as they underscore the power of narrative to effect social transformation. Jones makes a compelling argument for the powerful contributions not only of speculative fiction, but of literary works generally to a cultural analysis that helps to move us toward more just and equitable social relations. - Priscilla Wald, Professor of English and Women's Studies, Duke University, USA

Esther L. Jones is an Assistant Professor of English at Clark University, USA.