Winner, 2022 Children's Literature Association Book Award, given by
the Children's Literature Association
Winner, 2020 World Fantasy Awards
Winner, 2020 British Fantasy Awards, Nonfiction
Finalist, Creative Nonfiction IGNYTE Award, given by FIYACON for BIPOC+
in Speculative Fiction
**
Reveals the diversity crisis in children's and young adult media as not
only a lack of representation, but a lack of imagination**
Stories provide portals into other worlds, both real and imagined. The
promise of escape draws people from all backgrounds to speculative
fiction, but when people of color seek passageways into the fantastic,
the doors are often barred. This problem lies not only with children's
publishing, but also with the television and film executives tasked with
adapting these stories into a visual world. When characters of color do
appear, they are often marginalized or subjected to violence,
reinforcing for audiences that not all lives matter.
The Dark Fantastic is an engaging and provocative exploration of race
in popular youth and young adult speculative fiction. Grounded in her
experiences as YA novelist, fanfiction writer, and scholar of education,
Thomas considers four black girl protagonists from some of the most
popular stories of the early 21st century: Bonnie Bennett from the CW's
The Vampire Diaries, Rue from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games,
Gwen from the BBC's Merlin, and Angelina Johnson from J.K. Rowling's
Harry Potter. Analyzing their narratives and audience reactions to
them reveals how these characters mirror the violence against black and
brown people in our own world.
In response, Thomas uncovers and builds upon a tradition of fantasy and
radical imagination in Black feminism and Afrofuturism to reveal new
possibilities. Through fanfiction and other modes of
counter-storytelling, young people of color have reinvisioned fantastic
worlds that reflect their own experiences, their own lives. As Thomas
powerfully asserts, "we dark girls deserve more, because we are more."
