Black Futures

Welcome to Black Futures, the first iteration of The Black Futures Project by co-editors Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham. 

The Black Futures Project started a few years ago as a Direct Message exchange on Twitter and has evolved into a shared desire to archive a moment. In developing Black Futures, we sought to answer the question: What does it mean to be Black and alive right now? 

We sought to make sense of our unique paradox: We have never been more empowered and yet, in many ways, are still so disenfranchised. Social media has granted Black folks a platform to tell our own stories, but it has also made us subject to a new brand of surveillance and unprecedented co-option. How can we find innovative ways to define ourselves, for ourselves, without fear of erasure or the deterioration of the Internet? We feel part of a long lineage of projects, artists, activists, thinkers, and creators centered on the Black experience. We consider Fire!! magazine, The Black Book, The Black Woman: An Anthology, Conditions: Five: The Black Women s Issue, the work of Kathleen Collins, and 9 More Weeks by Sinazo Chiya as some of our most influential elders.

Black Futures is not designed to be a comprehensive document. Blackness is infinite a single book cannot attempt to contain the multitudes and multiverse. This is just one manifestation of a project that spans millennia. We are in a continuum of those who came before and those who will come after and make a dent in the archival project that is required of us as humans on this planet. We strove to nod to those we admire who are making history, and those taking history and doing something anew with it. We aimed for a perspective that was global, atemporal, not dominated by America and the West, not constructed by binaries, and as dynamic as possible for a print book.

We invite you to read this book alongside a device so you can search out names and terms that intrigue you. See where they lead. Our

Kimberly Drew is a writer, curator, and activist. Drew received her B.A. from Smith College in art history and African-American studies. During her time at Smith, she launched the Tumblr blog Black Contemporary Art, which has featured artwork by nearly 5,000 black artists. Drew's writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, Elle UK, and Glamour. She lives in Brooklyn, New York (just a few blocks away from Jenna Wortham).

Jenna Wortham is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine. She is also co-host of the podcast Still Processing, as well as a sound healer, reiki practitioner, and herbalist, all of which she lovingly practices on Kimberly Drew. She is currently working on a book about the body and dissociation. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

A dynamic mixed-media exhibition of Black creativity and culture . . . The work is vivid, juicy, thick as fecund as all of Black culture and equal parts anthology, scrapbook, and art xhibition. The editors and contributors make clear the infinite nature of Blackness via more than 500 crammed pages of essays, art, interviews, and ephemera. . . . A must-own compendium illustrating the richness, joy, and power of the modern Black experience. Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)
 
  An intriguing and beautiful book meant to inspire . . . Punctuated throughout with photography and other artwork and using vibrant colors smartly, the book is as interesting visually as intellectually. In their introduction, the editors state that one of their intentions with this book is to encourage readers to follow their interests into a deep warren of rabbit holes and discoveries. They succeed; every reader will engage with this work differently, and will be able to come back to it again and again for inspiration. Booklist (starred review)
 
[A] multifaceted and visually arresting anthology of essays, poems, and art . . . Bold graphics, vibrant artwork in a plethora of styles and media, and contributions from activists, scholars, and journalists across a wide range of experiences and perspectives showcase the multidimensionality of Black voices in America. This unique and imaginative work issues a powerful call for justice, equality, and inclusion. Publishers Weekly