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How Long 'Til Black Future Month
605 pages
A fierce, visionary collection that bends reality to explore the weight of history and the electric promise of alternate futures.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like standing at the crossroads of myth and modernity, where the grit of city streets bleeds seamlessly into the fantastical. The pace is steady and deliberate, inviting you to linger in the atmospheric, often haunting worlds built within each story. There is an electric defiance humming beneath the prose, which is sharp, evocative, and unapologetically political. It shifts from the dread-soaked realities of historical trauma to the wondrous, sun-lit possibilities of utopian futures. It is an experience of profound emotional texture—heavy with the weight of systemic oppression, yet fiercely hopeful and resilient. This book will deeply satisfy readers who want their speculative fiction to challenge, disrupt, and ultimately expand their understanding of what the future can hold.
- Mood
- electric
- haunting
- atmospheric
- wondrous
- Tone
- incisive
- defiant
- visionary
- empathetic
- unapologetic
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- Black resilience · systemic oppression · urban magic · the weight of history · alternate futures
- The writing
- Sharp, evocative, and fiercely intelligent, the prose shifts seamlessly between gritty urban realism and sweeping mythic registers.
- The arc
- The journey shifts from the heavy, haunting weight of historical trauma toward a fierce, imaginative defiance and hard-won hope.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave speculative fiction that challenges the status quo, centering marginalized voices and blending magic with sharp social commentary.
Content notes
- racism
- systemic oppression
- violence
- natural disasters
- historical trauma
About the book
In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination. Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow south must figure out how to save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated novella “The City Born Great”, a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis’s soul.
Content: - The Ones Who Stay and Fight (2018) - The City Born Great (2016) - Red Dirt Witch (2016) - L'Alchimista (2004) - The Effluent Engine (2011) - Cloud Dragon Skies (2005) - The Trojan Girl (2011) - Valedictorian (2012) - The Storyteller's Replacement (2016) - The Brides of Heaven (2007) - The Evaluators (2017) - Walking Awake (2014) - The Elevator Dancer (2016) - Cuisine des Mémoires (2016) - Stone Hunger (2014) - On the Banks of the River Lex (2010) - The Narcomancer (2007) - Henosis (2017) - Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows (2004) - The You Train (2007) - Non-Zero Probabilities (2009) - Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints, in the City Beneath the Still Waters (2010)
Description from Open Library.
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