![]() ![]() Naylor, Butler, and Okorafor all do the work of biomythography by foregrounding, in fiction, the rich inner lives of Black women in a way that directly challenges two dominant myths of Black womanhood-the mammy and the breeder-and, in Okorafor’s case, reclaims and rewrites the narrative of the Race Woman. ![]() With close readings of three novels by contemporary black women writers-Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, Octavia Butler’s Dawn, and Nnedi Okorafor’s The Book of Phoenix-I argue that work currently considered in the genre of Afrofuturism should instead be read as biomythography. Since 1982, the term biomythography has become a sort of umbrella for many types of feminist (auto)biographical writing. Lorde’s unique method of storytelling utilizes elements of traditional biography as well as the history of myth, this combination constituting a “new spelling” of her name. In doing so, Lorde suggested a new genre of writing that challenges the boundaries of existing genres, particularly for Black women writers. Audre Lorde categorized her semi-autobiographical novel Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, published in 1982, as biomythography. ![]()
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