A Spaceship in Bronzeville: Magi

by Ytasha L. Womack

Genres: Time Travel, Science Fiction

61 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2019

About the author

Ytasha L. Womack is an award-winning filmmaker/author/journalist and choreographer. She is author/creator of the popfuturist/afrofuturist novel 2212:Book of Rayla, first of the groundbreaking Rayla 2212 series. Her other books include the critically acclaimed Post Black: How a New Generation is Redefining African American Identity, a popular cultural studies text universities across the US, and her most recent work Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy Culture. She also co-edited the anthology Beats, Rhymes and Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip Hop.

A Chicago native, her film projects include The Engagement (director) and Love Shorts (producer/writer). A social media and pop culture expert, she frequently consults and guest lectures for corporations and universities across the world. She received her B.A in Mass Media Arts from Clark Atlanta University and studied Arts, Entertainment and Media Management at Columbia College in Chicago.

- summarised from http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/bio/wo...

She can be found at:

http://www.iafrofuturism.com/

https://www.facebook.com/iafrofuturism

http://postblackexperience.com/

http://www.postblackthebook.blogspot....

Reviews

[Thistle & Verse · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a twist ending. I enjoyed the parallels between this book and the 1st. It helped make the ending feel more fitting. I'm still not sure what's going on with the spaceship, but I think this book is trying to leave room for the weird and the unknown.

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still unpacking this.

I enjoyed Magi, I do not think that I can review it without considering the rest of the story. So, before I jump into spoiler territory, I shall say this. Bonnie, our protagonist, completes the adventure begun in Muse. She learns more of the nature of that first night in Bronzeville which launched this narrative, and we see her continue to wrestle with her self-image, what is expected of her, and what she expects ... not only of herself, but of society and the world around her. This is all wrapped in lovely prose, with references to some of my favorite poets, musicians, and artists. If you are a fan of time travel, early fifties jazz, and the black playwrights, poets, and performers of that period, mix that with a bit of social commentary in order to get this bite sized morsel of tasty science fiction.

Now, the details.

Okay. So Bonnie is actually Wiseman. That's fine. It works as a character arc. And once she named herself that, I fully expected to find that this was part of a time travel loop.

But Womack had something different in mind and it is making my mind ask so many questions.

Wiseman is actually a self-realized idealization of what Bonnie wished to become. Or at least, the version that we see in Muse is that. Which means that somehow, Bonnie ... without knowing or understanding anything about modern technology, gender issues, events that unfolded after the date she was experiencing ... somehow she manifested a version of herself from our near future (21st century Chicago where driverless cars seem common) that knew all of these things and inspired her, not only to create a work of art, but to become the work of art that she desired to be.

And honestly, I am trying to wrap my head around that, because in comparison a time loop is simple.

When she returns to 1951 at the end of the story, she does not go back to that night and give the speech which inspired her at the beginning of the story. She runs off with Mandalay to try to bring about the positive societal changes faster.

So, no time loop.

But along with that, I find myself wondering, is Womack suggesting that our best path is to return to the past and to fix things from there? I mean, my own tendencies are closer to Mae's. I do not like to look back more than necessary. I want to keep moving forward.

I do not think that this story lends itself to easy answers. But it does remind us to question our assumptions. For example, before going back to 1951, Wiseman has to continually fight against the notion that she is from another planet. And she must contend with people thinking that her time is virtually a hellscape. Instead, she tries to get them to see that the twenty-first century is not perfect and that there are things that can be improved. That perhaps if they join her, they can fix things together.

And as I write this, I think that is more the message than my concern about going backwards.

All in all, this was a fascinating bit of fiction. We never learn everything about some of the characters like Mae and the alien sisters. But I am okay with that. Wiseman never did, either. They did their parts for this story.

Maybe we will see them again in stories of their own.