Trying to return to blogging, so best way to start off is with one of these. As in previous years, I take this time to look back at the past year in my SFF writing life–and what I might hope for in 2025. Here we go!
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“De only Ku Klux I ever bumped into was a passel o’ young Baltimore Doctors tryin’ to ketch me one night an’ take me to de medicine college to ’periment on me. I seed dem a laying’ fer me an’ I run back into de house. Dey had a plaster all ready for to slap on my mouf. Yessuh.”
—Cornelius Garner (ex-slave, Virginia), interview by Emmy Wilson and Claude W. Anderson, May 18, 1937 (Weevils in the Wheat, 1976:102)
Image: Actor, Rapper, Artist Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) featured on a cover for his 2004 album, The New Danger–one of many visual inspirations for the enigmatic Dr. Antoine Bissett. A fellow boogie man.
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When, long ago, the gods created Earth
In Jove’s fair image Man was shaped at birth.
The beasts for lesser parts were next designed;
Yet were they too remote from humankind.
To fill the gap, and join the rest to Man,
Th’Olympian host conceiv’d a clever plan.
A beast they wrought, in semi-human figure,
Filled it with vice, and called the thing a Nigger.
–H.P. Lovecraft, On the Creation of Niggers (1912)
Phenderson Djèlí Clark 