"Exploring post-apocalypticism in the Black literary and cultural tradition, Post-Apocalypticism and the Black Female Imagination extends the scholarly conversation on Afro-futurist canon formation through an examination of futuristic imaginaries in representative 20th and 21st-century works of literature and expressive culture by Black women in an Afro-diasporic setting. The book demonstrates the implications of Afro-futurist literary criticism for Black Atlantic literary and critical theory, investigating issues of hybridity, border crossing, temporality, and historical recuperation. Covering a wide range of writers ? including Octavia Butler, Edwidge Danticat, Nalo Hopkinson, Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward and Beyonc ̌- Maxine Lavon Montgomery shows how Black women artists attempt to recover a raced, gendered heritage in framing an evolving social order existing as a part of, yet separate and distinct from, the past."--