La versione di Nnedi Okorafor: Black Panther tra Afrofuturism e Africanfuturism

Naijamerican author Nnedi Okorafor describes her sci-fi works as belonging to the Africanfuturist genre rather than to Afrofuturism writ large. In her opinion, Afrofuturism is characterized by a strong focus on African American culture, while Africanfuturism needs to be rooted “first and foremost in Africa,” privileging the continent and the black diaspora as its subject matter. Okorafor is vocal in supporting this distinction, but she shies away from giving a thorough definition of the genre, briefly hinting at the differences between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism through Ryan Coogler’s film Black Panther (2018). Comparing Okorafor’s contribution to the Black Panther Marvel comic with Coogler’s cinematic adaptation and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s critically acclaimed installment of the superhero’s adventures, this essay provides a closer inspection of the relationship between Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism in relation to the narrative universe of Wakanda.