Revisiting ourselves: the paths of ancestrality and temporality in the construction of an afrofuturist literature

Abstract

The writer Luciene Marcelino Ernesto, known as Lu Ain-Zaila is, along with Fábio Kabral, a precursor of Afrofuturist literature in Brazil. Their narratives are based on science fiction, mythology, and fantasy, intertwining them with the lives of the black population in the Brazilian urban context. Afrofuturism is a concept, a literary, cultural, aesthetic, and political movement that arises from the encounter between technology and speculative fiction, having conceived the possibility of a black future. This movement proposes to redirect our gaze to History from an Afrocentric perspective, where black men and women are protagonists of their narratives, expressions, manifestations. This article brought an analysis on the short story “Ode à Laudelina”, from the book Sankofia: brief stories about Afrofuturism (Ernesto, 2018). This short story deals with the universe of maids, showing how this workforce was exploited as a result of a slave-owning society which sought to maintain this logic even today. However, these women, with knowledge and access to their rights, are able to break free from the shackles of this work that sought to alienate them. Furthermore, the story of black women empowerment is also highlighted, which is effected through the aesthetic presentation of the characters. Such approaches can be seen from the perspective of Afrofuturism, since such a movement transits between the past, present, and future, dialoguing with the idea of ancestry, which is demonstrated in the short story.