Media Diversified
Foregrounding marginalised voices
by Micah Yongo ‘A person’s identity,’ Lebanese-French author Amin Maalouf once wrote, ‘is like a pattern drawn on a tightly stretched parchment. Touch just one part of it, just one allegiance, and the whole person will react, the whole drum will sound.’ It was these words that came to mind as I finished reading Haris A.… Read More
by Dan Whisker The comedian Athena Kugblenu recently delivered a comedic routine addressing the implausibility of Idris Elba’s black James Bond (black James Bond is inevitably in the long, slow passport queue at Moscow airport; local law enforcement agencies the world over vigorously object to a heavily armed black man in their jurisdictions). Of course,… Read More
By Phenderson Djeli Clark This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here. In the 1970s, African-American (now Afro-Canadian) writer Charles Saunders began publishing short fantasy stories in small magazine presses. From the beginning, his stories pulled on African history, as opposed to, as he put it, “the usual… Read More
By Phenderson Djeli Clark This is Part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 is here. In modern fantasy, with its fascination with medieval Europe, it seemed almost fated that acts of “othering” would take root. Some of Western Europe’s founding notions of non-Westerners trace back long before colonialism, as early as the medieval era, where… Read More
By Phenderson Djeli Clark This is Part 1 of a three-part series. Over the years demands for more meaningful diversity in our fantasy realms have grown increasingly louder–a clarion call that echoes from the mundane world to haunt our usual lands of elves, dragons, orcs and whatnot. Back in 2010 when local New Zealanders were told… Read More
Media Diversified 
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