Thomas, Sheree R(enée)

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THOMAS, Sheree R(enée)

PERSONAL: Female.

ADDRESSES: Office—c/o Anansi: Fiction of the African Diaspora, 765 Amsterdam Ave. 3C, New York, NY 10025-5707. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Editor and writer. Editor of literary journal Anansi: Fiction of the African Diaspora.

AWARDS, HONORS: World Fantasy Award, 2001, for Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2000.

(Editor) Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including Washington Post, Black Issues Book Review, and Drumvoices Revue.

SIDELIGHTS: Sheree R. Thomas's Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora is a collection of twenty-eight stories by black writers, with twenty of them being published in the United States for the first time. Some writers, like Octavia Butler ("The Evening and the Morning and the Night," "Afterword"), are known for their science fiction, while others, such as W. E. B. DuBois ("The Comet"), Ishmael Reed ("Future Christmas"), and Charles W. Chesnutt ("The Goophered Grapevine") are not usually associated with the genre. Library Journal's Denise Dumars called Samuel R. Delany's Nebula Award–winning "Aye, and Gomorrah … " and "Like Daughter" by Tananarive Due "excellent tales." Also reprinted in the collection is Walter Mosley's 1999 essay "Black to the Future," in which he writes of the power of science fiction. Among the other four essays are Butler's "The Monophobic Response" and Delany's "Racism and Science Fiction." Washington Post Book World's Gregory Feeley called the work "an important book, and nobody interested in speculative fiction or black literature should pass it up."

"That Thomas uses 'speculative' fiction, rather than science fiction, or SF, in her title, is significant," noted Candice M. Jenkins in African American Review; "while both conventional SF and fantasy writing fall under the umbrella of the speculative, that umbrella can be expanded to include what is commonly called 'magical realism' as well as almost any work which contains elements of the supernatural or merely the unbelievable." In his essay "Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction," American expatriate and Canadian resident Charles Saunders writes that using this definition, Toni Morrison's Beloved could be considered speculative fiction.

The stories collected are set in inner cities, the U.S. South, and the islands of the Caribbean; the characters include Americans, British and Canadians. "Indeed, what seems to draw all the work in the collection together is its deeply black sensibility," wrote Jenkins. "This assessment arises not from a simple assumption of racial homogeneity, but from the sense that these stories, in a variety of ways, possess a common interest in African diasporic culture and understanding of shared black experience." A writer for Coloredgirls.com noted that Thomas "is responsible for bringing to light the truth about a long-held misconception: that the realm of science fiction (sf), along with ice hockey, is one of the last white male holdouts. A few of us have known this to be otherwise, but bearing this knowledge was often a lonesome task until now." Similarly, an Ebony reviewer said Dark Matter "uncovers a rich—but unheralded—tradition."

In a Boston Herald review, John Clute noted that "almost totally absent are rockets, guns, space, conquest. Black stories, as demonstrated here, are fables of the emergence—the self-recognition—of the soul. They are about unpacking the weight of the world." Booklist's Roland Green felt the collection is "perhaps of even greater value on the African American studies shelves than in the sf stacks." Paulette Richards wrote in Black Issues Book Review that Thomas "has charted a rich alternative strain of speculation on the human condition which will engage readers and writers for years to come."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African American Review, winter, 2000, Candice M. Jenkins, review of Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, p. 726.

Black Issues Book Review, September, 2000, Paulette Richards, review of Dark Matter, p. 19.

Booklist, July, 2000, Roland Green, review of Dark Matter, p. 2015.

Boston Herald, August 13, 2000, John Clute, review of Dark Matter, p. 59.

Ebony, August, 2000, review of Dark Matter, p. 20.

Library Journal, July, 2000, Jackie Cassada, review of Dark Matter, p. 146; August, 2001, Denise Dumars, "Out of This World: SF for Novices," p. 196.

New York Times, June 15, 2000, Martin Arnold, "Science Fiction, a Black Natural," p. B3.

Science Fiction Studies, March, 2001, Isiah Lavender III, "A Century of Black SF," p. 140.

Washington Post Book World, July 30, 2000, Gregory Feeley, "Science Fiction & Fantasy: Black Writers, Old and Young, Staking Their Claims on the Genre," p. 4.