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~OVERVIEW~
~OVERVIEW~
Photo from NYU Press https://nyupress.org/9781479800650/the-dark-fantastic/
The Dark Fantastic
The Dark Fantastic
She crafts an argument about race in speculative fiction and crafts her own terms to describe the concepts. She discusses “The Dark Other” and “The Dark Fantastic.” She likes to call the stories she discusses fantastic rather than speculative fiction, even though they are the same thing due to fantastic having a stronger, more positive connotation to it. Within the Dark Fantastic is the Dark Other. The Dark Other is simply a character (or something within the story) that is other-ed and is related to darkness, shadows, or people of color. She uses these to navigate the world of race in fiction and discusses in depth the portrayals of people of color and what it does to young women of color in the real world.
Was The Cat In the Hat Black?
Was The Cat In the Hat Black?
Nel breaks down the numbers of how many fiction books include people of color as main characters and what genres those books fall under. Beyond that, he discusses the divide between people of color in the publishing industry and how the lack of representation in the industry reflects in the fiction stories. The real world influences the literature just as much as the literature influences the real world.
Photo from: https://philnel.com/writing/books/
Due to the fact that Legendborn came out in two thousand twenty, it only recently gained popularity on social media. However, there are many online articles either about Tracy Deonn herself discussing the book or readers discussing the story. Due to this, when I discuss Legendborn, I will mainly use scenes from the book, Tracy Deonn interviews, or online blogs and videos created by readers.
Several articles discuss the concept of lack of proper representation in speculative fiction but not entirely in depth like The Dark Fantastic by Ebony Elizabeth Taylor or Was the Cat in the Hat Black? By Philip Nel. I mostly use the two secondary sources by Taylor and Nel throughout the paper, with the occasional article or website here and there. It is a relatively new form of scholarship, so many articles about rare depictions in fiction come from opinion pieces and blogs online. These are still important as they discuss how many average people view the lack of representation in speculative fiction.
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