Out Of Egypt: histories of speculative fiction and Carole Mcdonnell's "Wind Follower".

Abstract

[Extract] Winners write history, says the adage, and winners wrote the classical proverb, "Ex Africa semper aliquid novum" — out of Africa, always something new. This positions Africa from a (white) winner's perspective, as the source of marvels, rather than their superior audience. This paper's title however, invokes associations made with Africa in Mosaic, Christian, and particularly, Afro-American Christian contexts, and it is the "newness" of an Afro-American fiction’s treatment of several genres, not limited to speculative fiction, that I want to trace in Carole McDonnell’s Wind Follower.