Harare Review of Books

176 pages.

Expected publication date: Oct 3, 2023 (becker&mayer! books)

Non-fiction.

There are few scholars better placed to write the definitive treatise on a Black cultural moment than Womack, who wrote perhaps the definitive book on Afrofuturism (Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-fi and Fantasy Culture, Chicago Review Press, 2013). This new book, a cultural exploration of the Black Panther, reviews the history and origins of the icon, as well as all of the associated creative output (of which, as you may imagine, there are now tons).

While Black Panther was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in that watershed year of 1966, many, many creatives have contributed to the character as we know it now—up to and including those who worked on the blockbuster film of 2018, the 2022 sequel, and all of the spin-offs—from comic book writers like Don McGregor and Christopher Priest and authors like Nnedi Okorafor and Ta-Nehisi Coates, to the incomparable, legendary, award-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter, who created most of the images we have in our heads of Black Panther and Wakanda, along with illustrators like Alitha E. Martinez and Afua Richardson. All of these luminaries and more are mentioned, and their contributions described. What makes this more than a history book is how Womack anchors the iconography of Black Panther in the Black consciousness movement of the 1960s to 1980s, and in its renewal/revival in the age of BLM with personal stories about the comics and character.

It’s not even just that, though: Black Panther is connected in its lineage to Afrofuturism, and that’s a subject Womack is uniquely positioned to explore, and she does in great depth. The evolution of the character has paralleled the evolution of thinking about Black futurity, and Black Panther has both contributed to and drawn from the discourse, in connections to Black speculative fiction, Afro- and Afro-Diasporic spirituality, Black futuristic visual language, and more.

Black Panther: A Cultural Exploration serves as wonderfully entertaining and deeply informative touchstone and cultural marker. Very highly recommended.

Thank you to Edelweiss and to becker&mayer! for this DRC.

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