Walidah Imarisha

Walidah Imarisha is an American writer, activist, educator and spoken word artist. She is known for coining the term "visionary fiction."

Career

Writing

Imarisha is editor of Another World Is Possible: Conversations in a Time of Terror, a collection of personal reflections on the 9/11 attacks. She is also co-editor, with Adrienne Maree Brown, of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories From Social Justice Movements,^[1] named after the legendary science fiction writer Octavia Butler (^[2]).

Imarisha is the author of the poetry collection Scars/Stars (Drapetomedia, 2013)^[3] and the forthcoming nonfiction book focused on criminal justice issues, Angels with Dirty Faces: Dreaming Beyond Bars (AK Press/IAS, 2016). She is also a member of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista, and has appeared on Puerto Rican punk band Ricanstruction’s second album, Love and Revolution. Her words have been featured in Total Chaos: The Art And Aesthetics of Hip Hop, Letters From Young Activists, Daddy, Can I Tell You Something, Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders in the Spoken Word Revolution, The Quotable Rebel, Near Kin: A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Butler, Joe Strummer: Punk Rock Warlord, Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, and Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency.^[4]

Imarisha is also one of the founders, and the first editor, of the political hip hop publication AWOL Magazine. Furthermore, Walidah has served on the editorial board for the national Left Turn Magazine. She is the director and co-producer of the Katrina documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans.

"Visionary Fiction"

Imarisha and Octavia's Brood co-editor Adrienne Maree Brown describe the term "visionary fiction" as follows:

“Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in an exercise of speculative fiction. Organizers and activists struggle tirelessly to create and envision another world, or many other worlds, just as science fiction does.” ^[5]

“We believe that radical science fiction is actually better termed visionary fiction because it pulls from real life experience, inequalities and movement building to create innovative ways of understanding the world around us, paint visions of new worlds that could be, and teach us new ways of interacting with one another. Visionary fiction engages our imaginations and hearts, and guides our hands as organizers.”^[6]

Teaching

Walidah has taught in Portland State University's Black Studies Department,^[7] Oregon State University's Women Gender Sexuality Studies Department, and Southern New Hampshire University's English Department. For the past six years, she has presented all over Oregon as a public scholar with Oregon Humanities' Conversation Project on topics such as Oregon Black history, alternatives to incarceration, and the history of hip hop.^[8]

Organizing

Walidah spent six years on the board of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, and helped to found the Human Rights Coalition, a group of prisoners’ families and former prisoners with three chapters in Pennsylvania.

References