When readers pick up work by Black authors of speculative fiction expecting it to be centered on the authors’ identities, or approach these authors with questions confined to specific racial or genre-based expectations, they are pigeonholing the authors and limiting their own ability to experience the richness of these narratives. These authors are frequently specialists at crafting stories that are intensely meaningful to our current reality without trying to “make a point” as Black authors, something the social impacts of diversity syndrome might indicate they should aim to do; we should really be trying harder to understand that Black speculative literature is much bigger than just Black.
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