Dzepfunde
When the storytellers of Southern Africa called sarunganos begin their nganos, they say Paivapo. It means Once Upon a Time… or There once was….
Two African Women were called to the United States to study in its most hallowed (read: Whitest and most Elitist) halls. In response, they traveled thousands of miles from home and family to nurture their craft and deepen their dreams. Did they foresee the isolation or loneliness of their singularity in Imperial spaces? The world may never know.
But when they met each other the emptiness cored out by this experience in one spoke to the emptiness in the other. To that call, they answered as griots are known to. They created something to stem the isolation, to prove amongst themselves that Black Words Matter. So they called.
And two Brothers from the Diaspora responded with a reverberant yes. With their four voices combined, they called.
Voodoonauts is the response as a community for Black Speculation, independent of Diasporic or Continental status, independent of time zones or nationalities,
The first fellows are the response. Also time and heart donated by the likes of Eboni J. Dunbar and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. It was within Nana Kwame’s session we heard the call for an anthology.
We responded with submission guidelines, another call. And the response warmed our hearts.
For two years, we’ve held and refined these stories and poems from our first cohort, a handful of esteemed guests, and even some of the founders’ work. We said:
Every Black Child went to bed with their parents or grandparents telling them a story of old or greatness or warning or joy. Or they had a friend who told them about the ways of the world when they were too young to learn for themselves. And because of that, every Black Person lives with narratives, superstitions, customs that impact the way we walk through the world.
From John Henry to the Orisha, from impundulu to Candyman, the aziza and Baron Samedi, back to Bre’r Rabbit and Bast and T’Challa. Black People the world over hold myriad and, sometimes, intermingled mythos, wives tales, and folklore.
With this theme - (Re)Living Mythology - we ask you to explore where you’re coming from and where you’re going to, in the liminal space that is now - or not. Your works can be mythpunk and urban legend and darkening of pantheon and more than retellings and villains-to-protagonists and explorations of modern myths and beyond.
If you look closely in these pages, you might find Baron Samedi and soucouyants, a crooked preacher in search of power and a desperate mother in search of a name for her child, a goddess made of night and a goddess made for water. If you look closely, you might find resilience and joy and magic. If you look closely you might find the textures of Blackness as found in Chicago, Bulawayo, Nairobi, Lagos, Saint Louis, Port-au-Prince, San Juan, and Glasgow.
But if you read the book as a whole, you might find you’re looking closely at yourself. (Re)Living Mythology is a call to action - to make magic of the mundane, to dream yourself into the future, to survive every horror, to find your own quests - to see yourself in Blackness, whether that’s for the first time or the millionth.
And when you close the book, you’ll respond as we have to sarunganos for generations.
Dzepfunde - Continue, we are listening.