ABSTRACT
Crossing merfolk narratives blur the boundaries between fantasy and science fiction, drawing on scientific rationalism, African cosmologies, and Western mythologies. By depicting not necessarily futures, but preexisting and coexisting temporalities and worlds, and by locating the origin of these new forms of life in the violence of the transatlantic slave trade, crossing merfolk present possibilities for being and freedom that are inextricable from, yet not bound by racialized hierarchy and violence.
