Black Corfu and black speculative fiction

I’m miles behind, following Elder Sign. But I’ll keep listening and reading, so I’ve now read Black Corfu and listened to the episode on it. I liked the Kafkaesque aspects of the story, the ending and the discussion on the podcast about the question if the protagonist made a mistake or not (Like Brandon and Glenn, I don’t think he did).

As a matter of fact, I’m also reading Lovecraft Country (and the series DVD’s wait for me on my table). Both are speculative fiction that has racism as on of the big themes. There is a great deal of focus on "leftist" themes such as racism, climate, and gender variation in modern speculative fiction, which I think is interesting – especially when thinking about the great but xenophobic, racist and rightwing texts of Lovecraft and other ‘classic’ weird fiction writers. My girlfriend (among other things university lecturer and researcher on literature and climate change) – who is, like me, a white person - pointed out the fact that both works are written by white authors, which is on itself not negative (though there is the question about the experience of the author), but which made me wonder if there are black weird fiction writers. I know the answer of course is ‘yes’ (and I read some horror by black writers), but I can’t remember reading stories like Black Corfu (magical realism) or Lovecraft Country (urban fantasy) by black writers.

There is this movement of Afrofuturism, but that’s mostly science fiction I thought, though according to Wikipedia it also encompasses magical realism. The Wikipedia article may be a good starting point to delve more into black weird fiction. But maybe readers of this post also have tips for black writers who are involved in the (new) weird. Let me know!

Because Black Corfu is about racism and Venice (the 17th century republic), my girlfriend recommended me to read Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh. According to her, Venice (the city), racism (discrimination of Bengali-Americans) and the effects of climate change play an important role in this book. I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t say much more about it, though I think there isn’t anything weird in it.