ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces readers to science fiction (SF) that explores gender relations through the lens of womanism, a social theory based on the history and everyday experiences of Black women. After briefly reviewing key tenets of womanism as first articulated by author Alice Walker and poet Audre Lorde, the chapter examines their more recent expression in Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s short SF story “Evidence” (2015). In this story, Gumbs imagines a future where Black women communicate across generations to document the apocalyptic fall of the patriarchal capitalist system that ignited intersectional oppression across the world and its replacement by new and more equitable modes of communitarian living based on a redefinition of self, wealth, and technology. To tell this tale, Gumbs replaces the ruggedly individualistic, White, male hero who dominates classic apocalyptic and postapocalyptic fictions such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series and Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land with the “womanist speculative archetype.” This new science fiction (SF) heroine undertakes a quest to build a better world for herself, Black women, Black people, and all humanity not just through the invention and deployment of new technologies, but through the creation of “zamis,” or female-centered communities.
