Repairing the past, healing the future: Love as a transformative element in Kelechi Okafor’s <i>Edge of Here</i>

This article examines Kelechi Okafor’s Edge of Here (2023), a short-story collection which combines Afrofuturism and romance to explore love as a reparative and transformative force. I analyse how Okafor positions Black British women at the centre of speculative narratives, emphasizing love as a means of addressing both historical and contemporary racial injustices in the UK. Drawing on Anna G. Jónasdóttir (2014) and bell hooks (2000, 2006), this analysis presents love as both a creative and restorative power whose transformative potential depends on care, agency, and political awareness. Close readings of “The Watchers” and “Councilwoman” shall serve to illustrate how intimate relationships, memory, and spirituality intersect with both dystopian and colonial contexts to challenge systemic oppression and encourage resilience. The interconnection of care and personhood shall also engage with Afrofuturist theories of memory and temporal reparation (Eshun, 2023) and Yoruba cosmology (Abimbola, 1997; Gbadegesin, 1991). The findings reveal that Okafor’s Afrofuturist approach allows for the reconfiguration of past traumas into hopeful speculative futures in which black women exercise agency in confronting surveillance, institutionalized racism, and performative reparation. The article demonstrates the reparative potential of love, not only as a personal or romantic experience but as a socio-political tool to cultivate collective hope.