Monáe, Janelle
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author, Music.
Working name of US singer-songwriter, actor and author Janelle Monáe Robinson (1985- ), active from around 2003; the imagery of her music sometimes suggests realms of Fantastika (see SF Music). She is of sf interest for The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer (coll 2022), a collection (or perhaps anthology) of tales, each based on her music and written with a different author, a list which includes Alaya Dawn Johnson and Sheree René Thomas. Various scenarios involving gender, Sex, race (see Race in SF), and other trigger issues are unpacked in what seems to be a kind of Alternate World known as Dirty Computer – a term which is also used to designate non-compliant humans, in particular those whose defiance of the state's policy of compulsory Memory Edits enables their retention of dissident Identities. Much of the book is shaped around Black Americans' hard-won lessons in the nature of the world they must redefine (see Afrofuturism). [JC]
Janelle Monáe Robinson
born Kansas City, Kansas: 1 December 1985
works
- The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer (New York: HarperVoyager, 2022) [coll: with various collaborators: hb/]
links
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