Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction by Sami Schalk (review)
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction by Sami Schalk
Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women's Speculative Fiction is the inaugural monograph from Dr. Sami Schalk. Schalk brilliantly weaves Black feminism and disability studies together by examining the profound speculative fiction of Black women writers. Through chapter-long treatments of Octavia Butler's Kindred and Parable series, Phyllis Alesia Perry's [End Page 220] Stigmata, N. K. Jemisin's The Broken Kingdoms, Shawntelle Madison's Coveted Series, and Nalo Hopkinson's Sister Mine, Schalk makes a compelling case for how we could read these speculative texts as the vanguard for bridging what are thought to be two disparate theoretical traditions.
Schalk traces her titular use of the term "bodyminds" to feminist disability scholar Margaret Price. Bodyminds addresses the inseparable nature of our minds and bodies, troubling the Western Cartesian split. Bodyminds is an important concept that helps describe the ways Black women science fiction writers construct characters and disability in their works. Similarly, "(dis)ability" allows for more nuance in addressing themes throughout Schalk's selected sci-fi texts, which include disability, ability, and hyperability. (Dis)ability provides a helpful frame that acknowledges the fluidity of ability in these Black women's writing. Schalk uses intersectionality and crip theory as two specific analytical tools for understanding these works.
The book is set up such that each chapter is coherent on its own, though there are threads that run through all four. Beginning with an introduction of the theoretical and thematic considerations of each examined text, Schalk gives readers a preview of the significant perspectives relevant to the example of science fiction at the heart of each chapter. Schalk ends each chapter with a pithy conclusion that helps readers understand the ways that Black feminism and disability studies shaped her theorizing of the text. This practice shows Schalk's anticipation of her book being utilized in undergraduate classrooms and her commitment to accessibility in both theory and practice. By allowing each chapter to do its own work, readers can zero in on specific themes or authors addressed in Bodyminds Reimagined.
Chapter 1, "Metaphor and Materiality: Disability and Neo – Slave Narratives," uses Octavia Butler's Kindred to address the question of disability as metaphor in science fiction. Schalk examines the material conditions of the main protagonist Dana's acquired disability, and she critiques the binary frame that allows disability to be only metaphor or impairment. Schalk effectively reconfigures this dualism by pointing out Butler's own savvy ending, which does not allow for disability to be collapsed into an either/or. Schalk brings into relief the multifaceted nature of (dis)ability as captured through Dana's own meaning making about her impairment.
In chapter 2, Schalk subverts the centrifugal force of physical disability at the center of disability studies by expressly addressing mental disability. "Whose Reality Is It Anyway? Deconstructing Able- Mindedness" takes a close look at the protagonist Lizzie in the work Stigmata by Phyllis Alesia Perry. Lizzie is labeled "crazy" because no one around her can fathom a reality in which she experiences and manifests on her body her great-great grandmother's traumas of enslavement and her grandmother's resulting traumas. Schalk follows Lizzie's lead to a place where her reality is no longer pathologized, but understood. In the context of an able-minded world that refuses to account for the generational [End Page 221] effect of enslavement on the bodymind, Lizzie forges her own path. (Dis)ability becomes an opportunity for intergenerational matrilineal healing.
Schalk takes on the hyperempathy of the character Lauren Olamina in Octavia Butler's Parable series in chapter 3, "The Future of Bodyminds, Bodyminds of the Future." In Butler's not-so-distant dystopian future, Lauren Olamina has hyperempathy syndrome, which means she feels other beings' pain and pleasure. Hyperempathy has been examined by literary scholars before, but few if any do it with the nuance that...
