Easy Journeys to Other Planets: Black Myths & Visions of Otherworlds

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This thesis introduces the author&rsquo;s notion of Black Myth-Making as a way to understand the ways in which Black people have constructed themselves in the wake of slavery. I trace the legacy of Black Myth-Making through the Flying Africans of Coastal Carolina, Alexander Bedward, Black Herman, Sun Ra, and Drexciya. These figures represent a tradition of myth-makers, unified by a kind of kinship generated through citation and a common theme of flight&mdash; escape from their oppressive conditions. In this tradition of Black flight, I identify fugitive epistemologies, reflective of the investment of these communities in the possibilities of supernatural liberation. Drawing on Max Yeshaye Brumberg-Kraus&rsquo;s theories of queer mythopoeia, I argue that the stories we tell shape the land we inhabit. By telling utopian fiction, one necessarily expands their horizon of possibility. This expanded horizon&mdash; a renewed faith in the </span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">Alterdestiny</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;">&mdash; then makes us free to commit ourselves to the labor of alteri</span><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">ng</span></em><span style="font-weight: 400;"> destiny. As the dominant, hegemonic myths guide us towards crises of energy, water, and debt, it is critical to tell new myths in the process of building other worlds.&nbsp;</span>