Black Future Month is Now: An Evening With N K Jemisin

On Monday, I attended An Evening With N K Jemisin at Tulane University. I had gone back and forth about whether I’d attend, and at the last minute I decided to go ahead and show myself. I’m glad I did.

I was in the audience at last year’s Hugo Awards in San Jose when Jemisin won her third-straight Hugo for Best Novel. Her acceptance speech was electrifying, and it helped me solidify my perspective on working in the SF field since 2005.

For several years now, SF has been in a major period of flux. more and more people of color are working in the field at higher levels, and to have a black woman win the Best Novel Hugo three years in a row is a first. If you’re so inclined, you can watch the full speech here.

Hearing Jemisin read her short story, “Sinners, Saints, Dragons, and Haints in the City Beneath the Still Waters” was a vital experience. I first read the story in Uncanny Magazine when it was first published, and it captured my heart. When I learned she was releasing a short story collection, How Long Til Black Future Month, I knew it was an instant buy. I love most every story Jemisin has published, but that one is my favorite above all. As a long-time transplant to New Orleans who moved down the summer after Katrina, that story strikes a deep chord in me, and i you haven’t read it, you should.

That story is one that I think of often as I teach Adult Education classes at Delgado Community College. Many of my students make me think of the main character in that story and the struggles the people of New Orleans have been through in the wake of the hurricane. Katrina and its aftermath have long since fallen out of the new cycle, but one need not look terribly hard to see the scars the city and its people still bear.

After the event, I stood in line to have my copy of Black Future Month signed by Jemisin. I noticed that the line moved relatively slowly because Jemisin stops to genuinely connect with each fan, engaging with them personally and acknowledging not just their enjoyment of her work, but their lives and cares as human beings. She did the same for me. I thanked her for her work and for the Hugo speech and we chatted briefly about my career and what her work has meant to me, and when she signed the book, her note read “To Alex: KEEP GOING.”

Continuing in the field was never truly in doubt for me, but that inscription lent me some much-needed strength. I love the title to Jemisin’s collection—when I first read it, I literally shivered at its import—but N K Jemisin has answered her own question. We’re living in Black Future Month.