Thursday, May 7, 2026

Star Wars For Black People (short vid)

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s groundbreaking “Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda” storyline from Marvel’s Black Panther comics expands Wakanda into a galaxy-spanning civilization and blends Afrofuturist aesthetics and liberation into one of the most ambitious Black Panther narratives ever created.
Posted by at No comments:

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

The Expansive Range of Black Science Fiction


By Jeremiah Carter

Science fiction novels are another important subset of 21st-century Black fiction, highlighting a strong and expanding presence within the dataset.

Type “science fiction” in the search bar for the Navigator, then select “Novel” for Reading Form and “21st century” for Period of Publication. The results include works that extend beyond traditional novels, comic books, children’s books, and adaptations categorized under science fiction. This range indicates that the genre reaches readers across multiple formats and age groups.

This pattern suggests that science fiction operates as a multigenerational genre in 21st-century Black literary production. Its presence across forms points to an expanding audience and a flexibility that allows it to circulate among different kinds of readers.

Related: 
Posted by at No comments:

Intradisciplinary Exchange in English: Gates, Fishkin, and Jim

What happens when a prominent scholar of African American literary studies invites a leading scholar of American literary studies, specifically Mark Twain studies, to contribute to a biographical series about figures of African descent? That’s what occurred when Henry Louis Gates, Jr. invited Shelley Fisher Fishkin to contribute to Black Lives, a series designed to produce “brief, authoritative biographies of individuals of African descent who profoundly shaped history.”

Fishkin's Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn's Comrade (2025) takes us beyond familiar conversations about interdisciplinary work and raises the issue of intellectual boundaries and the dynamics of intradisciplinary exchange.

While it is accurate and necessary to state that African American literature is American literature, or that African American literary studies is American literary studies, it sometimes behooves us to think of those areas as overlapping yet distinct creative domains. Doing so makes it possible to examine their points of convergence in more precise and critically productive ways.

The Gates–Fishkin–Black Lives connection here is a compelling case of intradisciplinary exchange. Keep in mind that Gates and Fishkin have been teaching and publishing in their respective areas for well over four decades at this point. So Jim, published under the auspices of Black Lives, represents a convergence of long-standing scholarly trajectories as well as a deliberate crossing of subfields within English.

What this example ultimately invites us to consider is how we might more intentionally cultivate intradisciplinary exchange within English itself. We might ask what is gained, and what becomes newly visible, when scholars move across subfields with purpose and clarity. In that sense, Jim offers a testament to the power of productive crossings within a disciplines. 

Related:
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, May 4, 2026

Listening to Writing Black Panther: A New Format, A New Experience

I’m truly honored and excited that Bloomsbury Publishing has produced an audiobook version of my book Writing Black Panther: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Representation Struggles. It’s still relatively uncommon for books by literary scholars to receive the audiobook treatment, which makes this release especially important.

You can purchase a discounted audio edition through Bloomsbury’s website, or find the audiobook on Audible.

Below is a brief excerpt from the audiobook, read by actor Greg Lockett.


Posted by at No comments:

Selective Readers and Time Constraint

Students at Black Graduation, April 28, 2026

By Jeremiah Carter

Every Fall and Spring at SIUE’s Black Graduation, there is a table of books where graduates are invited to select a free title as a parting gift, before taking their seat after their names are called. The moment is brief but may reveal something about how readers make choices under pressure. It also creates a rare setting where selection happens publicly and in real time.

A group of selective readers often return to the table at the end of the ceremony, uncertain about the books they had initially chosen. Many of them had already stood out earlier as those who took longer to decide, in contrast to graduates who quickly selected a familiar name, such as Frederick Douglass, or bypassed the table altogether. Their return suggested that the first choice had not fully settled the question of what they wanted to read.

These readers lingered, at times frustrating event coordinators and slowing the line of graduates behind them, but their behavior was notable. With 175 graduates and a wide range of available titles, some repeated editions, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and comic books by Black authors, the table offered more than enough choice. What distinguished this group was not indecision alone, but a visible effort to match themselves with a text that felt worth carrying forward.

Their selectiveness suggests a form of reading awareness that is often difficult to observe in more controlled settings like classrooms or surveys. Faced with abundance rather than assignment, these readers treated the act of choosing as consequential, even within a brief and public moment. Professors of African American literature are familiar with how selection shapes reading, considering debates over range and depth in syllabus design, but we often take this process for granted when considering students’ reading practices; paying closer attention to these moments may clarify how readers define value, relevance, and intellectual commitment.

Related:
Posted by at No comments:

Bloomsbury, Amy Martin, Black Panther, and Me


In October 2024, Amy Martin, a literary acquisitions editor at Bloomsbury Academic, reached out to my brother Kenton and me to ask whether we were considering expanding our article, "How the “New York Times” Covers Black Writers" into a book. She encouraged us to submit a proposal if so.

As it turned out, Kenton and I had already been developing our ideas into a larger book project. We completed a proposal and submitted it. Right after submitted, I followed up with Amy, writing: “Not to overwhelm you with proposals, but I noticed your 'Black Literary and Cultural Expressions' series, and since I’m nearly finished with my manuscript on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s run on Black Panther, I decided to prepare a proposal. Let me know if it might fit within your series.”

Amy kindly reviewed the materials and invited me to share draft chapters. I sent what I had at the time, the introduction through chapter eight of a projected ten chapters.

The rest is history, and in this case, “history” means rounds of reader reviews, revisions, editorial feedback, production processes, and now an upcoming release on May 14.

Along the way, Amy shared some very good news. First, beyond the standard academic contract, she noted that the U.S. retail price would be set at a level that allows the book to be sold in bookstores, an uncommon circumstance for a work of literary scholarship. Second, she confirmed that the press would also produce an audiobook edition, another notable advantage for an academic title.

Related:
Posted by at No comments:

Roundup of Blog Posts about Ta-Nehisi Coates and Black Panther


I was pleased when the folks at my publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing, invited me to contribute a blog post, "From bestseller to superhero: The impact of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Marvel debut," connected to my upcoming book, Writing Black Panther: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Representation Struggles. Here's a roundup of posts I've produced on Coates and Black Panther since the September 22, 2015 announcement that he'd take on the comic book.


2026

2023

2019

Related:
Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, May 3, 2026

Star Wars for Black People

On April 27 and 28, 2026, I organized an exhibit highlighting “The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda.” The exhibit featured visual panels and curated selections based on my book Writing Black Panther, specifically the closing chapter entitled “Star Wars for Black People.” The storyline stands out for its epic scope, imaginative reach, and its rare commitment to placing a wide range of Black characters at the center of a sprawling science fiction universe.

The phrase “Star Wars for Black People” comes from Steven Thrasher, who used it to describe the scale and cultural significance of the Black Panther film. The phrase proves just as fitting for Coates’s comic book storyline, where Wakanda expands beyond Earth into a vast intergalactic empire.

Coates’s “The Intergalactic Empire of Wakanda” unfolds as a story of political conflict, interstellar travel, revolutionary struggle, and large-scale world-building. It is one of the relatively few works in popular culture to imagine outer space populated by a large and varied cast of Black characters. This alone marks a significant departure from many mainstream science fiction traditions, where Black presence has often been limited or peripheral.


from Black Panther #1 (2018)

Visually and conceptually, the storyline draws on Afrofuturist aesthetics—the blending of Black history, culture, and speculative futures. The narrative incorporates references to Maroons, Maasai, Zulu, and Mackandal, connecting Wakanda’s intergalactic reach to histories of resistance and survival across the African diaspora. These references expand the meaning of Wakanda, linking it not only to a fictional nation but to a broader history of global Black movement, struggle, and continuity.

The scale of the storyline becomes especially clear in issues #24 and #25, which bring together an extraordinary range of Black superheroes, including T’Challa, Storm, Falcon, Misty Knight, Luke Cage, Zenzi, and Manifold. The result is something akin to a large-scale crossover event, an “Endgame for Black people,” where multiple figures converge within a shared narrative universe.

Star Wars for Black People was designed to invite viewers and readers to consider what it means to imagine Black life, history, and possibility on an epic, intergalactic scale. In doing so, it highlights how Coates’s work extends the boundaries of both superhero comics and Afrofuturist storytelling, offering a vision of Black presence that is expansive, interconnected, and undeniably central.

• "Star Wars for Black People" (podcast episode)

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)