Twelve-volume Vampire Huntress Legend series. Speculative world of vampires, slayers, shifters, angels and demons in her Re-envision history in ways that connect them to black women’s legacies of I posit that Banks and Due “rewrite, re-visit and

In this piece, I wish to further Gwendolyn Pough’s explorationĪrticulated in the groundbreaking issue of FEMSPEC focused on black They are talking back and changing their own reality with the agency These women are staring back at the genre of vampire fiction through the medium The world, but also about solving the problems of the world ( Pough ix). The black female body in these booksĭemonstrates a power that allows for personal explorations of pleasure and painĪnd the possibilities for socio-political change within the black community.įor Octavia Butler insists that “science fiction is not about the problems of The reclamation of the black woman’s body. Supernatural, apocalyptic, and dystopian/utopian fiction.

Science fiction and fantasy fiction that includes such themes as horror, Speculative fiction operates as a catchall term for Banks, continue this tradition of the oppositional gaze within The writers that most pique my critical interests, Tananarive DueĪnd L.A. Have occupied this oppositional gaze within the written format. Women writers, popularized in their literary Renaissance of the 70s and 80s, Oppositional gaze has the ability to go far beyond the realm of film. Nor the passivity allowed the construction of white womanhood, their gaze mayĮxist as oppositional to both constructions ( hooks 57). Unique position, neither possessing the penetrative power of the phallic gaze hooks insists that black women have much to offer film theory for they occupy a This theory is in contrast to the filmic theory of the white male gaze, whichĪggressively penetrates the image of the passive white female upon the screen. Spectators” bell hooks posits the existence of an oppositional gaze possessedīy black women in the realm of film theory. In her article, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Sexing the Colorlines: Black Sexualities, Popular Culture,įinding the Humanity in Horror: Black Women’s Identityĭepartment of English, University of Texas at San Antonio, San

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