Romancing Queer Theology and Reproductive Diversity

Abstract

155 BOOKS IN REVIEW studies and pedagogy today. Lavender, however, brings together a novel set of texts that do not (especially in the case of Hurston and Wright) appear to be science-fictional in any obvious sense and clearly argues an against-thegrain reading of African American literary history (and literature itself) that reimagines the relationships among mimesis, speculation, futurity, and the political life of texts that extend beyond themselves (something Seo-Young Chu was asking us to take seriously more than ten years ago). Section two’s focus on literature does to some extent seem imbalanced compared to the first part’s stunning display of interconnections among literary and non-literary texts. Given just how diverse and well-documented the Black resistance movements of the twentieth century are, Lavender has wisely chosen not to bite off more than any one book can chew—and he acknowledges as much in the introduction. Instead he sets a precedent by studying afrofuturism as a way of reading Black history and literature. He demonstrates his reading practice first as a cultural historian making meaning for Black life in periods when African American literary production was limited as a field of written texts by slavery and Jim Crow. Black creators instead produced other kinds of texts that literary scholars have turned to in recent decades, whether those were written in music or blood or abolitionist dreaming. And second, he demonstrates that the very creation of “African American literature” as a concept in the twentieth century, after Kenneth W. Warren’s 2011 postmortem What Was African American Literature?, was always in the process of creating Black meaning, negotiating raced space and time, and those deeply embedded in afrofuturist practices. After all, as a speculation on what it means to be Black in an America of double consciousnesses and machine-/alien-like objectifications of the racialized other, how can African American literature not be deeply speculative? With this new book, Lavender shows us a path forward in our efforts to better understand the increasingly obvious but always already science-fictional world we inhabit.—Sean Guynes, Michigan State University. Romancing Queer Theology and Reproductive Diversity. Regina Yung Lee and Una McCormack, eds. Biology and Manners: Essays on the Worlds and Works of Lois McMaster Bujold. Liverpool UP, 2020. 308 pp. $105.47 hc. Known for her humor, plot twists, and well-developed, engagingly imperfect characters, award-winning sf and fantasy writer Lois McMaster Bujold has been a fan favorite for thirty-five years, earning seven Hugos, three Nebulas, and the 2020 SFWA Grand Master’s Award. Most of her work is set in three different universes: the VORKOSIGAN sf saga (1986-2018), the CHALION fantasy series (2001-2005), and the SHARING KNIFE romance/fantasy series (2006-2019). Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, she has also gained considerable critical attention for the quality and complexity of her work. Critical essay collections include Janet Brennan Croft’s anthology, Lois McMaster Bujold: Essays on a Modern Master of Science Fiction and Fantasy (2013) and Edward James’s Lois McMaster Bujold (2015). Now building on earlier scholarship and in response to Biology and Manners: The Worlds of 156 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 48 (2021) Lois McMaster Bujold, a conference held 20 August 2014 at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK, a volume of conference proceedings has come together with fourteen cogent essays that approach Bujold from various critical directions, including feminism, queer theory, medievalism, linguistics, disability studies, and fan fiction. The title is apt, since much of Bujold’s fiction speculates on the intersections of biology and social mores or manners. The floral cover image, taken from Buissons ardents [ardent bushes], a tapestry by French Benedictine monk Dom Robert (Gu de Chaunac-Lanzac, 1907-1997), reflects a “vivid and fertile depiction of the natural world” through a “feminized medium” (cover page), evoking insider humor, since at first glance, the packaging resembles a biology textbook with three different stylized butterflies to represent each of her series. The book is divided into six sections, plus index and contributors’ biographies. In the “Introduction: The Emergence of Bujold Studies,” the editors explain how the anthology places particular emphasis on the fantasy series, which...