Empowerment, protest and celebration: the representation of ‘black girl magic’ in speculative fiction and contemporary culture

<p dir="ltr">Over the last decade, Black Girl Magic has developed from a hashtag on social media to a rallying cry of empowerment, protest and celebration for Black and Black-Mixed women. Black Girl Magic is a cultural phenomenon that runs through contemporary and popular culture, and manifests in the characters, worlds and mythologies of the speculative literature, film and comics created by African American women. This thesis examines how Black female authored speculative texts embrace and repurpose established genre conventions and tropes in their representations of Black women to reinforce and challenge racial stereotypes. It also considers how Black female writers use genre as a speculative tool to address themes and ideas from the wider African American literary canon, including the writing of pioneering Black feminist theorists and contemporary voices in both social media and wider societal thought. Using the writing and archives of Octavia E. Butler, this thesis examines how Black Girl Magic’s themes of self-help, celebration and resistance exist within these texts in beneficial tension with their often violent and harrowing portrayals of Black women and their experiences. These include the representation of ancestorial magical powers in Tomi Adeyemi’s <i>Children of Blood and Bone </i>and Nalo Hopkinson’s <i>Brown Girl in the Ring, </i>Black female superheroes in N.K. Jemisin’s <i>Far Sector </i>and the <i>Black Panther </i>comics and films, and space exploration and survival in Butler’s <i>Parables </i>novels and drafts. This thesis examines theories of Afropessimism alongside strategies of self-help and resistance within speculative fiction and contemporary social media, images and theories of Black Girl Magic. Using Africana Womanism and Afrofemcentrism, this thesis examines Black Girl Magic beliefs and strategies in these speculative texts, and how the dichotomy between Black female optimism and pessimism is productive, collaborative and provides an opportunity for both healing and self-acceptance.</p>