Please join Ytasha Womack for the Brooklyn Launch of her new book The Afrofuturist Evolution: Creative Paths to Self-Discovery Sunday April 6th at 7pm.
The spaces revealed through the practice of time manipulation in Black cultures lend themselves to storytelling, a time-hopping process that integrates memory and community.
Drawing on disparate philosophies and science behind electronic beat-making, lyricism, dance, memory, myth, and cosmology in the African and African Disaporic traditions, this book seeks to demonstrate relationships between rhythm, space, and ways of being as an articulation of futures and alternate realities made present.
Infused with author and Afrofuturist educator Ytasha Womack’s own practice and contemplations, this book, rich in anecdotes, will interrogate Afrofuturism as an experience that unfolds through combinations of being a maker and theorist. Readers will take a creative journey that allows them to bring Afrofuturist practices into their own lives. The goal is to expand imagination, rootedness, and possibility.
From Senegalese poet, political theorist, and politician Leopold Sedar Senghor’s ideas on the plastic arts and Negritude to writer Malidoma Patrese Some’s articulation of water symbolism in Burkina Faso; from tap dance exercises to composer, DJ, and recording artist King Britt’s Blacktronica, The Afrofuturist Evolution aims to demonstrate Afrofuturism as embodied theory in practice. This book—in simple, straightforward, but powerful ways—invites readers to bring these practices into their own lives.
What people are saying about The Afrofuturist Evolution and why you want to be there:
“Ytasha Womack shows us that our relationship with space, time, and the idea of the multiverse isn’t just about equations—it’s also about imagination, artistic creation, and our spiritual sensibilities. We are lucky to have a griot, a storyteller, like Ytasha Womack as our guide into the Afrofuturist cosmos.” —CHANDA PRESCOD-WEINSTEIN, theoretical physicist and author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
“The Afrofuturist Evolution is an incredibly fantastic body of work that charges not just through Afrofuturism but into Afropantheology, cosmology, and other schools of thought. . . . A must-read for anyone looking to understand Black scapes, cultures, knowledge, living, and being.” —OGHENECHOVWE DONALD EKPEKI, Nebula-winning speculative fiction writer/editor and founder of Afropantheology
“A rebellious and instantly enjoyable trip, a reverberating ode to remembering, and an aphrodisiac of conjuring dream worlds. Ytasha takes us on a red pill, blue pill rabbit hole exploration and understanding of the Afro-ness in futurism. Afrofuturefunkadelicexpialidocious!” —NONA HENDRYX, musician, producer, author, and activist
Ytasha L. Womack is a filmmaker, futurist, and the author of Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture, and Post Black: How a New Generation Is Redefining African American Identity, and a contributor to the Smithsonian exhibit companion title Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures.
Womack has taught and lectured on Afrofuturism to audiences ranging from Carnegie Hall and the Smithsonian, to Afropunk’s Film Festival in Brooklyn to the Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam; St. Etienne School of Architecture in France to MIT Media Lab’s “Beyond the Cradle” in Boston. She is the creator of the Rayla 2212 sci-fi multimedia series, the director of the award-winning film The Engagement, the producer and writer of Love Shorts, and the coeditor of Beats Rhymes and Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip Hop. She lives in Chicago.
THE AFROFUTURIST EVOLUTION PLAYLIST
Be immersed in the sonics of the celestial and earthly as we prepare for the book’s landing. Playlist here.