Narrative futures. How did the stories we tell shape how we think about the future, the present and the past?
What is speculation for? And how might we construct better narratives for a better future?
Narrative Futures is a podcast coming to you from Futures Thinking.
A research network housed in the Oxford Centre for Research in the Humanities.
My name is Chelsea. Hey, I'm a doctoral researcher in the faculty of English here at the University of Oxford.
Welcome to the second episode of Narrative Futures.
With me virtually and across time zones is Mahallah Machiko to discuss Afro futurism and an alternative apocalypse.
This podcast is interactive following the interview.
You'll be treated to two writing prompts designed by novelist and creative writing tutor extraordinaire Louis Greenberg.
We invite you to share your response to these with us via email at Fut.
Thinking at Torch O, X, dot, AC UK.
We'll share these on the blog where you'll also be able to find the full transcript of each episode with links to the books,
writers and ideas that we discuss. As the world so radically changes,
we hope these conversations and ideas give you insight and inspiration to think about how else we might live and create collectively going forward.
Mahallah Michiko is a novelist, performer and singer songwriter, the author of The Yearning and the short story collection, Intruder's.
Her first novel won the University of Johannesburg PRISE. Her debut novel and was long listed for the International Dublin Literary Awards.
She is also a co-writer of South Africa's first black superhero comic Quinsy,
and has released albums and performs under the stage name Black Porcelain.
She's also the author of the novel adaptation of the film Beyond the River.
Born and raised in Soweto, Johannesburg, Michigan, now resides in a sleepy suburb of Cape Town, where she describes it.
People either start families or retire.
What follows now is an extract from her short story collection, Intruder's, published in 2018 to critical acclaim.
The story you're about to hear a part of is Untitled Three and forms part of a series.
This short story is an exploration of the minutiae of an apocalypse, amnesia,
speculative space time, transcendence and the consequences of segregation along economic lines.
In an end time scenario.
I'm reading from Untitled three, which is one of three stories that kind of it was supposed to be a little story, which is why I called it untitled.
And then one more started coming out. It's about two sisters. My mother calls me Havey, it's her idea of a joke.
The skies turn black and you fell out of the sky like hail.
Get it? My little Hailie. My mother's name is Millicent.
That's it. No second name or surname. As if to add more confusion and take away more letters.
She prefers to be called senti pronounced say day like the money.
You know a sent. I came into this world with nothing, not even send it in.
So called me sending. She jokes about coming into this world without so much as a black saint.
But she never says where she's from or how she and Yesin survived the fire rain.
We joke a lot about not having a surname. Certain names are old-world things.
So is giving birth. Santa found me and cared for me until I could walk again.
So she's my mother. There are a few others living in the rubble of what used to be Johannesburg.
We live in a penthouse at the abandoned even before fire fell from the sky.
Carlton Hotel on the 30th floor. No roof over our heads.
But we live in a penthouse. The top of the building was probably blown away in the last days.
We don't talk about the lost days. There isn't much to say. Too much lost and so many blank spaces.
One day the world was dull and the next it was filled with far too much excitement and panic.
One morning while we were eating sandwiches at Breaktime, Melanie asked me if I thought we would see the sun again.
We can feel it, Mel. It hasn't gone anyway.
There's just I know her bottom lip look like it was going to fall on the ground, but do you think those clouds will ever move?
Satellites can't see Earth. There haven't been any clear pictures. I'm scared.
Melanie was my half sister sister because we were inseparable as kids and half because my mother cleaned her father's house.
So perhaps they half considered me a part of their family.
After my parents died in a car accident, Melanie's parents promised to look after my sister and me.
My real sister, Wynonna. I guess her having that name is a joke, too.
Well, not means easy or uncomplicated, but nothing except her birth was easy for my sister when I was a child genius who got straight A's,
went to university before her age mates graduated and never became the engineer she wanted to be.
Instead, she grew tired of the job rejection letters and ended up working as a secretary for a GP.
She'd also decided that being smart was a disadvantage. So she played small and unremarkable until she started to believe it.
Santa thinks I don't like to talk about vanilla, but that's not true. Manola is the one thing that makes me feel sane.
She's like a light. I run to, in my mind in the new world causes clouds in my heart when I'm staring up at a new sky.
I run to win. Sometimes I find her in the kitchen of our small four roomed house and watching her eating supper quietly,
her one hand scooping up up and gravy, the other hovering over my homework.
Whenever she spots it a mistake, she would look up at me and pretend to choke on her food.
At other times, I ran to Braunohler and find her sleeping peacefully on the sofa.
After a long day of work. Quiet moments with my sister.
Why the silence of the new world doesn't scare me. I've gotten used to the green skies that turn purple at night.
Sad day. Your baby's awake. She's alive.
Those were the first words I heard. It was, yes. I couldn't see him at first, so I tried to sit up, but my arms wouldn't move.
Suddenly, a bearded face appeared looking down at me. He said, Sorry.
It's the straps. You were like a tromped on a boat.
He unfastened the straps and helped me sit up while my brain was catching up with who were what I was.
Instinctively, I brought a hand up to my eye and Yasseen slapped it away.
He looked nervous, said, Please come here now.
The word now jolted a picture out of the fog in my mind. No, no.
The rest is still foggy, but I remember that I didn't speak for weeks. What was there to say?
Yes, an incentive didn't push me. They spoke to me like I would one day choose to answer them.
They looked at me when they spoke to me, said my new name when addressing me.
And life carried on around me. We sat together at the dinner table.
They went shopping for clothes. They thought I would like, taught me how to walk again and clean the wound with my left.
I used to be. I avoided my reflection and walked the dark, damp rooms of the abandoned hotel.
When the penthouse got too small for three people. We were we had trio, Yassin was them very tall, and his broad shoulders will always hunched.
Must have been a way to make people feel comfortable around him.
My sister Bonello was also tall and she hunched his shoulders in the same kind of way, especially around a boy she liked.
Santa looked like an old woman. A little soft in the belly and the skin was beginning to sag, although she seemed to be in her 60s.
She behaved a lot like a child sometimes when she was making suffer.
She would stop, throw the food out the window and start making a brand new meal.
And then there was me with my bandaged. I neglected afro and bouts of silence and anxiety.
It took me days to figure out why I was always anxious.
There was no people noise, no cause, no radios, no conversation, no music and no background to our new world.
We were the background, the foreground, the main focus, and that which is out of focus.
It was exhausting to know that we were it. You can be angry, but you're not allowed to keep quiet.
It's just the two of us. Who else must I talk to? Do you want me to go crazy and talk to myself?
That's what Woonona would say. Whenever we had a falling out and I chose to punish her with silence.
It only spoke to himself when he thought we were watching him. His solo conversations were nonsensical and occasionally funny, really.
He seemed to be watching Santa and I wanted to know why I had to wait until he was helping me with
physio and Centre was out doing whatever it was that she did when she said she was going shopping.
Yes. Yes. Hayley. Please tell me your real name, man.
Can't be nice too, because some junk name all the time. Gum.
Go ahead. The last person to say my name was my sister, hearing it cause the lump in my throat but I carried on is using your real name.
He nodded and carried on helping me stretch. I know you're not crazy.
I told him. Never said I was. So why do you look at centre like like I don't trust her.
He stood up and wiped his brow. How many women? Over 60. Do you think I can walk up and down the stairs of the skyscraper once a week?
Why did I wind up here in this building? He was sweating and I was getting anxious.
But I let him speak. Some of it was difficult to follow, but it sounded like Yassin was in the middle of a long operation on a patient with cancer.
When fire started falling from the heavens, there was chaos in the hospital.
I hadn't hit inside one of our labs. I don't know what I was thinking.
He woke up in the penthouse and sent his explanation was she was looking for survivors and found him in the streets.
Why is that so hard to believe? I asked, pulling myself up onto my feet.
I lived in Kimberley. I was in a hospital in Kimberly and that's more than 400 kilometres from here.
His voice echoed in such an eerie way that we both kept quiet for a while.
I think I'll stop there. That's really lovely. Thank you. So thinking a little bit about the ideas that you you're dealing with there.
The future Johannesberg kind of end of the end times kind of story.
And what really jumps out at me is the intimacy of the the four people living in the Carlton Hotel.
And I wonder if you could speak a little bit more about about why you would have written those four characters together at the end of the world?
Well, you know, this story untitled and I couldn't give it a title because it was supposed to be just a short story.
And I mean, it's a collection of short stories, but Untitled is one of the shortest ones.
And it was literally about two sisters and the world was coming to an end.
And one of them had the privilege of going to, you know, great schools.
And of course, she had access to people who could get on ships and fly away from the world as it was falling apart.
And she then instead decides to give her sister the opportunity to see a new world, to have something new outside of her struggles.
So one of them stays and the other goes. And that was supposed to be the end of it.
And as I was writing more stories with the collection, these two sisters kept on bothering me and I needed to know what happened to them.
So I. I wrote to Untitled to an untitled three and an untitled three.
I mean, Johannesberg is such a it's a densely populated area.
It's just busy all the time. There's no quiet in in Johannesburg City.
And I tried to imagine what it would look like if, you know, a huge part of the population had disappeared.
Where would people be? What would they do with those spaces?
Because the fact that that Caulton Centre space is abandoned is crazy for me when there are so many people who need homes.
Absolutely. And I was I was exploring what people would do with those buildings.
And you know what it was left of of Johannesburg. And I liked these three characters because one of them obviously has a secret.
And the other is kind of plain crazy. And one is just trying to figure out what's going on.
But she's also recovering from her wounds.
So I just like this idea of three people who don't know each other but have become each other's families and how absolutely I
love the idea of the chosen family in that and the bonding together that is necessitated by something like a catastrophic event,
which we're all living through now. Right. I I'm interested in the introduction to your collection.
Intruder's, you write after futurism is not for Africans. And I think this is really important.
I'm gonna read this section now.
You write our needs when it comes to imagining futures or even reimagining a fantasy present a different from elsewhere on the globe.
We actually live on this continent as opposed to using it as a costume or a stage to play out our ideas.
And I think the excerpt that you read about Johannesburg is obviously exemplary of that.
Could you share a little bit more about your ideas about Afro futurism and what kind of stories you think are missing here?
Well, you know, it's so funny because when I wrote this essay, I nearly didn't put it in the collection.
And I told my publisher about it. And she says, well, you have to put it in the collection.
And I didn't think anyone would read it. So I have a strong opinion about it.
And then suddenly people were saying it's controversial.
And I thought, well, what's controversial about saying that all black people are not the same and that our needs are not the same.
And I'm needs to need to imagine our futures is not the same.
And I mean, Afro futurism, I don't have a problem with that. And I think we can consume and interact with each other's art without it being called.
One thing I'm very wary of cultural imperialism as well.
And I talk about that in the essay as well. And I just think that in my stories about, you know, the future,
I don't have to talk about the fact that these people have a language that they've been speaking for a long time.
They have their own culture. I can actually get down to the nitty gritty of this is what it may look like.
So in Untitled two, there's a story about most that would not know who ends up on this.
You know, on the spaceship, the lived earth, all the rich people lived and they took a couple of poor people with them.
And in the context of South Africa, it was well, for me anyway.
Apartheid is not something of the past. So what would that mean on the ship?
Well, people with no power. What would that mean? Would that mean they'd be an apartheid 2.0?
And what policies is interesting thing, she says, as it is on Earth.
So shall it be in heaven? She's literally talking about whatever crap they were dealing with in in South Africa before the world fell apart.
They'll deal with that on the spaceship and on the spaceship. There aren't any rules.
There's no governments. There's no African Union. There's no U.N. You know, there there's no politicians or whatever.
So it's it's a different kind of navigating post apartheid South Africa in a spaceship when the world has fallen apart.
So those are the kinds of things that I'd like to deal with. And I think Afro futurism is great.
I do like to read Afro futuristic work,
but I don't think what I do is Afro futurism and I still maintain Afro futurism is not for Africans living in Africa.
I don't know what our thing is called. I'm not a name of things.
I just wanted to point that little thing out. Absolutely.
And as you say, it was it was controversial, but I think so important, too, to register these kind of these differences in what.
Yeah. As you say, what it mean to be black in the world in different places and with different levels of access to privilege and you avocation.
Theros you know, in apartheid 2.0 or what will a well, what might rather, you know,
a post apartheid or a post-colonial world look like when or if we left the planet is really interesting.
It's obviously part of that very rich heritage of of politics that imbues sci fi.
You deal with the past really beautifully in the yarning.
Your debut novel for which you won the University of Johannesburg 2016 debut
PRISE and you were shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and
that you in that you mix traditional and secular views and you seem to be
writing a future or sort of future present that relies on facing past trauma.
So this seems like a recurring theme in your work. Yeah.
The other day I saw something and I don't know who wrote it.
They say there is no before, often only during. And that's how I like to think of time.
And that's why sometimes my stories are not linear. Sometimes we in the past and then we're back in the present and we're in the future.
I don't know how to write a linear story because that's not how time works for me.
And I didn't know this about myself as a writer until until I started writing the yearning.
And then this came up again in intruder's. I'm interested in time as something that there's no past or present for me.
Sometimes when I'm when I'm writing, I like to think.
I don't know how to explain this, but I like to think of everything as during like it's all happening right now.
And it all has an effect. And it becomes very.
It becomes very tricky when people try to write things without any knowledge of the past or to be like, oh,
I'm going to write something about futuristic things, not thinking about the past or how how history keeps repeating itself.
That's why I like to think of things as during as opposed to before and after.
Yeah. I really love that. Yeah. The kind of permanence of time rather than the linearity of it kind of inhabiting time rather than it passing us by.
Which was, you know, one of the ways that we articulate it.
I love the analogy that you give of wearing taxis or trainers that fits us versus risk, you know,
resisting or wearing these taxis to resist parroting UK and US cultural imperialism's and just choosing to wear the shoes, the taxis that fit.
And I want to ask and speak a little bit about your work with cuisine's South Africa's first superhero.
So how does how do you think that works in that? And what is your experience of writing South Africa's first superhero?
Been so lonesome, Keyzer and Clyde Beach started quizzing together, I think it was in 2014.
And they kept on saying, oh, well, you know, quizes South Africa's first superhero and I love telling the story.
Quinsy is not actually South Africa's first superhero. South Africa's first superhero was a dude called I think he was called Mighty Man.
And this was part of apartheid propaganda. So Mighty Man was a good black person under apartheid.
And he was basically an instrument of propaganda. He was going around telling other black people, carry a passbook.
Don't let them do this. Be a good citizen.
But people never really took to Mighty Man, because if you're so mighty, why are you not stopping apartheid?
Yeah. So I love that story of Mighty Men.
And I'm still to this day trying to find a copy of my two men.
So I always think about that. The idea of mighty men being, you know, a good black person under apartheid and influencing other other black people.
And then I think of the story of Quinsy, who is a kid from the Eastern Cape to Johannesburg.
We call it Gold City.
And this guy is like lots of South African young South Africans who come from rural communities and move to big cities for opportunities.
And he's doing what a lot of young people are doing, which is, you know, hustling, as they call it, and press up, push out patent.
They've been doing all of this this kind of stuff.
And he's got to find himself and he's got he's wrestling with his parents traditional beliefs and what he believes is happening,
what he thinks is cool. And he also he's also very reluctant to accept the Chosen One story because he is the chosen one.
And he'd really rather be an influencer with lots of Instagram followers and, you know, do cool stuff.
And I like the idea of quinsy because it is very South African and everybody wants to be a star.
I mean, you just need to spend time in Johannesburg to see that everybody really does believe that they're a star.
And I liked the idea of quinsy being the antithesis of South Africa's real first superhero, which was my team man.
And for me, quinsy is us wearing those those prevert.
We get proverbial techies and staying in our lane, as opposed to just copying and pasting something that we think is cool from someone else.
Absolutely. You've said elsewhere you've had really, really positive feedback on quinsy from from your readers.
And I presume that that readership spanned generations.
Yeah, it's really interesting when we when we do readings, because we we expect a much younger crowd.
And then there are people who are like in their 20s, because when we write it, we also we do have subtext,
you know, so the kids, of course, will enjoy like the bright colours and all of the car chases and whatever.
But there's also a subtext about being being living a dual life in South Africa as as a young black person.
You've got all of these kind of Western ideals, but you also have a family of traditional family wants something different from you.
And there's two things that want things from you and you have to decide which way to go.
And we have lots of parents saying they love quinsy, too.
And it's always really interesting for me that so many people across, you know, so many age groups are.
Already in love with this story, I think it's really universal in terms of.
Well, maybe not universal, but universal, too. To South Africa. Because because of this kind of world view of anyone can make it in Johannesburg.
Or how big is the city paved with gold. Which is, you know, for the longest time been part of the country's sort of mythology.
And then the reality of kind of multiple cultures and trying to, as you say, mix the mix your traditional and your family expectations with.
Yeah. With the Western ideals. I I'm going to repeat one of your own questions back at you.
I think this is really interesting. And you don't answer it in the in the introduction to intruder's.
So I'm really keen to hear what you think. Now, how does who we are right now affect an imagined future?
Oh, OK. I don't know.
I'm working through this in my work. You know, the more I write, the more I feel like.
If we don't imagine a different world based on who we are and knowing what kind of a past we had,
and maybe I'm speaking specifically about South Africans, if we don't think about where we come from, then how do we how do we imagine?
Because we have to know the things we don't want to like. Here's a basic example.
Apartheid. We don't want that. Right. It's it's part of who we are as part of our past.
So when we imagine a future, obviously, one of the things is zero apartheid.
But what were the the things that happened that made apartheid?
So I won't say successful, but it it definitely went on for too long.
It shouldn't have happened, but it went on for far too long. What were the circumstances that made that made that happen?
And in order to imagine a future, we need to know all of that stuff.
It's nice to know that some good came up with a couple of laws. But what was happening before?
Would I go as far as the Anglo Boer War? Probably you.
So I think if we if we have an understanding of who we are, what we've experienced and what has shaped us,
and we want to imagine futures, I think we need to understand that first.
So I don't know if I'm answering your question. I don't even know if I'm answering my own question.
Yeah, it's absolutely the case. And I think you do a really beautiful job of that,
of digging into the who and the what of the characters to think about what kind of future they might inhabit.
Thinking about what you might be reading or watching or interacting with media wise at the moment.
What kind of imagined futures are you looking for? Wow.
You know, I've been I've been thinking about love, this idea of love and how the world is really when we talk about love.
People think about romantic love. And so this is because my my new novel.
Well, the one it's my work in progress. It is about love. But it's not just about romantic love.
It's about the work of love. You know, and given what's happening in the world, a lot of people are saying, teach me,
I want to be different, but also I'm so sensitive to my privilege and love is undoing that, right.
Love, love is unlearning and love is learning. And I think when I think about futures specifically in this book that I'm working on,
there's a lot of learning and learning, but it's all rooted in love because love is work.
And for me right now, when I think about futures, I'm thinking of the work of love,
whether it's love for the land, love for yourself, love for your community, love for your gender.
I just think for me right now, I'm I'm really, really thinking about if there's any future to be imagined, if needs.
We need to start looking at what the work of love is.
That's really, really powerful. I love that idea. I'm really looking forward to the next moment.
When is it? Is there a due date on that?
Can you give us any teases? Both my agent and my publisher think they're going to get something soon.
But I've been doing so much. I'm writing I'm just going back to things and going, oh, no.
When I first wrote this and this was many years ago when I first rooted, this seemed like a great idea.
But I've grown so much that I feel like I'm kind of rewriting it.
It's becoming a different story, so I don't know when it will be.
Out in the world, that's kind of your process, isn't it? That you you write something and you leave it alone for a bit and you come back to it?
Yeah, I I'm one of those people that cannot be working on one thing only.
So right now I'm working on quinsy and I'm working on this novel,
but I've already started another writing project that will probably be novel number three.
And I like to do that because then I don't have anxiety about, oh my goodness, can I still write or whatever.
And I'm sure this this side thing that I'm doing for fun, I'll be I'll go back to it in two years and be like, oh, yeah, this was a good idea.
Let's do this. I always like to have something in the wings. For those writers and speculators listening,
stay with us now for writing prompts and exercises designed to encourage putting pen to paper or hands to keyboard,
as well as reflection on the writing process. The section is designed and presented by Larry Greenberg in Untitled Three.
Mahallah Machiguenga reimagines her home city of Johannesburg.
In an apocalyptic time, writers and filmmakers are very aware of the pleasure of destroying our home towns.
For your first prompt, describe an end to your hometown, city, neighbourhood or village.
You might like to write a few paragraphs of key description and action and then write some brief contextual nerds.
As always, the word Constance up to you. But for the purposes of this exercise, I'd like you to keep it local.
Imagine an apocalypse in a place you know intimately, maybe even to the extent of boredom.
It may just be a few streets or familiar field with maybe an entire city since you can commute with your eyes closed.
Remember that apocalypse isn't necessarily complete destruction. What does apocalypse mean to you?
You may like to pause now and come back when you've written when you've written your pocalypse.
Ask yourself what a rich person to destroy. Why?
What have you chosen to change? Has anything grown or prospered?
What have you chosen to describe as your focus? Been on buildings, nature, people or anything else?
Let's step two five ways. Your familiar place will be worse. Let's step two five ways.
Life. They might be better. As always, please feel free to share your results with us.
Machiko says she doesn't know how to write a linear narrative. There's no before or after, she says.
Only during this interplay between linear and non-linear and nested narratives is a common theme throughout these interviews.
Your second prompt practise playing with temporal form.
Take the Genesis myth or any other famous linear cause and effect plotline and rewrite it in a non-linear way.
I often think of Kurt Vonnegut s troll from a Dorians and Slaughterhouse five when I think of non-linear narrative.
They teach Billy Pilgrim to become unstuck in time.
They see humans as stuck in a railway car, travelling in the same direction at a constant speed, looking only in one narrow direction.
Whereas travel from a Dorians can visit any part of the temporal nature it will.
Mastering Troughing Andorian Time would allow us not only to write stories in an interesting new way,
but also as a black product releases us from the concepts of fate and destiny, which we might argue have caused a number of problems in the world.
How would the creation of Adam and Eve and Original Sin look different?
If cause was unlinked from effect? Consider the technical and philosophical repercussions of being unstuck in time.
And that concludes the second episode of Narrative Futures.
If you have any comments or would like to submit work to be featured on our blog, please e-mail us at fut.
Thinking at Torch Erich's Dicey Dot UK. You can also follow us or tweet us on Twitter at Think Fut.
Now, your host on this podcast is Chelsea Haith and you can tweet me at Chelsie Underscore Haith.
And Louis Greenberg is also on Twitter at Louis Greenberg. Thanks to Mahallah Machiko for joining us on this episode.
Next week, I'll be speaking to Sami Shah about jinns.
That's DJI and then Pakistani maths and whether or not we might replace our governments with benign A.I.
Narrative features.