Afrofuturism. “Art that envisioned a more joyful, liberated future for black people and all people,” Rachel Edleman, a 10th grade Language Arts teacher at Garfield, defined. It’s “reimagining either a past, present, or future about people and Black culture in a way that can lead to empowerment and justice,” shared Elizabeth Young, a fellow Garfield 10th grade LA teacher. Sophomore Mecky Friel added that it’s “a future for Black people, and smaller minority groups, focused on opportunities.”
Afrofuturism is a new unit taught in 10th grade World Literature Composition, which began last year when two student teachers, Mike Kim and Aya Bisbee, decided to create a new curriculum. In previous years, 10th grade students read “stories from a collection called Black Enough,” Young stated. But through this unit, “students [experienced] too much trauma dumping during Black History Month, with all this focus on police brutality and problems in the black community, which is important, but we wanted to maintain focus on more positivity in future.” Sophomore Friel agreed with this comment, and said, “most of the stuff we learn in school, like history and stuff about Black culture and Black history, has a lot of negative information, which is important to talk about, but Afrofuturism is about the future of Black people in a positive light.” With the new unit, not only do “Black students see themselves empowered, but it’s an entire genre of art and literature to imagine the future we want,” Young shared.
In the Afrofuturism unit, there’s a “pretty big range of authors in terms of style of national origin,” Edleman explained. Young added that “some of [the short stories] are about climate justice, some of them are about staying in touch with the land and with our own history.” Through this unit, the teachers “want [students] to be imagining new things, imagining new ways while also connecting art with other artists’ ideas of intertextuality,” Edelman said. “It’s the most unique [unit] that we do in the year,” Friel shared, “it was in depth because we had examples of [Afrofuturism] instead of just talking about it.” For the final project, each class period teams up in creating a final class zine, which is a “selection of stories and films from the unit that our students have explored through art and writing,” Edelman shared. “There are imagined conversations, there are imagined interviews with authors, conversations, and text messages between authors.”
Looking into the future, Edleman shared that they “would love to get a Black British author in the mix next year.” Since the unit “doesn’t have one book as its central text… it’s easy to switch out and in texts.” Since Afrofuturism is a speculative genre, meaning a broad topic, “we have to redefine it constantly and we’re looking to expand the definition” of Afrofuturism, Edelman explained. The best part: through this unit, 10th graders can “create the future.”
Graphic by Mecky Friel
