ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the sonic fiction of Janelle Monáe as Cindi Mayweather in the context of Afrofuturism and analyzes Monáe’s sonic narrative space of “Wondaland” as a black speculative site that reimagines black life into the future. The chapter begins with a brief overview of Afrofuturism and its relation to African American culture before providing analysis of Monáe’s performance and its contribution to black speculative fiction. It then concludes with an assessment of the relation of contemporary social and political conditions in the US to Monáe’s musical outputs.
