Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions by Khadijah Queen


Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions
Title : Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1573661988
ISBN-10 : 9781573661980
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 286
Publication : Published March 7, 2023

A gathering of innovative, speculative fictions by writers of color, both established and emerging
 
The innovative fictions in Infinite Constellations showcase the voices and visions of 30 remarkable writers, both new and established, from the global Native American/First Nation writers, South Asian writers, East Asian writers, Black American writers, Latinx writers, and Caribbean and Middle Eastern writers. These are visions both familiar and strange, but always rooted in the mystery of human relationships, the deep honoring of memory, and the rootedness to place and the centering of culture.

The writers in this anthology mirror, instruct, bind and unbind, myth-make and myth-invert, transform and transmute, make us belly-laugh or hum our understanding, gasp or whisper gently, and remember that sometimes we need to holler and fight as we grieve. Any dangers herein, imagined or observed in poem and story, transport moving from latent to extant, then unleashed.

This work does not presume; it presents and blossoms, creating a constellation of appearances, a symphony of belonging.

“In collecting this work,” note editors Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura, “we felt humbled by the love threaded throughout the voices speaking to us in stories and poems that vault beyond expectation and settle in our consciousness as an expansion of what’s possible when we tend to one another with intention. We felt lifted, held aloft in these arrangements of language. We hope that as you read each story and poem, you will find the same sense of empowerment and celebration that we know has sustained us over countless generations, and in their beauty and humor and intelligence and complexity, continue to enrich us still.”

CONTRIBUTORS
George Abraham / Kenzie Allen / Shreya lla Anasuya / Thea Anderson / Wendy Chin-Tanner / Alton Melvar M. Depanas / Yohanca Delgado / Jennifer Elise Foerster / Aerik Francis / André O. Hoilette / Brian K. Hudson / K. Ibura / Pedro Iniguez / Ruth Ellen Kocher / Ra’Niqua Lee / Tonya Liburd / Kenji C. Liu / Shalewa Mackall / Lucien Darjeun Meadows / Melanie Merle / Juan J. Morales / Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint / Cindy Juyound Ok / Daniel José Older / Soham Patel / Lynn C. Pitts/ Khadijah Queen / Sheree Renée Thomas /  Sarah Sophia Yanni / dg nanouk okpik / shakirah peterson
 


Infinite Constellations: An Anthology of Identity, Culture, and Speculative Conjunctions Reviews


  • Bogi Takács

    A brand new anthology of mostly-speculative work by mostly-speculative authors (not exclusively!), edited by Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura. I feel like it's gone under the radar so far because it was published by a university press, who might not promote it through the usual SFF channels.

    But please don't miss this, it was so good.

    The focus is on authors of color engaging with identity and culture using the toolset of the speculative. There is plenty of fiction and poetry, also some creative nonfiction. When I read Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint's memoir about her family last year, it struck me how it had a tone that was at least adjacent to the speculative, and I was happy to see an excerpt here! There's more and more and more in the same vein: almost 300 relatively large-format pages of writing. (Sized to fit the academic bookshelf, no doubt.) I'm somewhat averse to overly lengthy anthologies, but here I never for a moment felt the book was too long - this was the right length to explore the topic in a caleidoscopic, multifaceted way.

    The table of contents is a good mix of more established and newer authors, and reprints and original work. I was happy to find some of my favorite new-ish authors (George Abraham!) and more established writers (Sheree Renée Thomas!). Also authors whose work I know from outside SFF altogether like dg nanouk okpik, whose pieces still seamlessly fit into the whole. Finally, plenty of previously unknown-to-me names I will be seeking out from now on! Most authors are from, or currently living in, the West, and the explorations often have to do with this specific kind of diasporic context.

    This anthology is both varied in theme, daring in form, and it includes the kinds of pieces that aim high and then stick the landing.

    Probably the only note that struck me as discordant was a character in a story going on about how a Palestinian character was so white and how his culture was a "choice" (the author was not Palestinian), and I felt this was presented in an unreflected way. But this was a minor mention, from a character shown to be somewhat disagreeable - I did want to bring it up because it left me frustrated.

    This is overall a very strong anthology, and it also has a reading / teaching guide at the end, which was assembled thoughtfully - I feel sometimes these are kind of tacked on, but here the questions were in-depth and engaging. I would firmly recommend this book to educators too.

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    Source of the book: Print review copy from publisher

  • xylophonesandglockenspiels

    I thought this anthology was going to have more speculative short stories, but some were not speculative and there was also a lot of poetry. It was a decent collection, but I'm not sure my library should have shelved it in the Science Fiction & Fantasy section