Introduction to vol. 25.2

Editorial Introduction

Batya Weinbaum

Welcome to 25.2!

We are pleased to offer you three critical essays, a poem, and many solid reviews. Although Merry Byrd is staying on to perform other functions, this will be the last review section that she edits for us. At her own request, she is stepping down and passing the torch to Hannah Victoria Palmer (H.Palmer2@lboro.ac.uk) from the UK. We thank Merry for her many years of excellence performance as our review editor and for contributing her own reviews to the journal since 2017. Other changes in personnel include the addition of Professor Emeritus Cari Carpenter as proofreader. She addresses the reader wìth a letter in our latest Behind the Scenes entry. We are currently integrating a new Peer Review Coordinator and interviewing applicants for Social

Media and Creative Writing Editors, Social Media Editor, and a Creative Editor! So, stay tuned and

watch this space. Thanks also goes out to the two new bloggers who have provided reviews of episodes of the new season 7 of Black Mirror, Muscan Soni and Hansika Kapoor. We also need more regular bloggers and posts so come forward if you wish to volunteer your energy for ideas you wish to propose or if you are willing to take assignments. A special interest we have is in feminist themes in the Netflix sf/supernatural series Extant.

The first essay, by Deja Groomes, explores understandings of Afrofuturist daughterhood in an

essay and novel by Toni Morrison. In doing so, she presents and challenges the myth surrounding the Black girl. She highlights scholarship establishing precedent in this field and argues that the Black girl is a transgenerational transformer connecting past,

present and future. Next, Saiffiyeh Hosein explores the retelling of the myth of Scheherazade via the space of a digital comic. She also changes the context of the setting of the myth. In so doing, she chooses to challenge the Orientalist lens embedded in these inherited folk tales which present an imperial view. She introduces Sanya Anwar’s feminist and decolonial reimagining of the iconic tales. Through visual analysis, the author interrogates the visual history and re-enter the narrative on female subjectivity and rejection of subservient femininity. Showing resistance to the Orientalist spectacle, she demonstrates how Scheherazade and her sister move from objects of fantasy to empowered subjects at the center of their own story. The third essay, by Barbara Bennett, who has just joined the collective, pursues the relationship between women, anger and dragons symbolically by delving deeply into a significant fictional form. The single literary contribution, “Mother Persephone,” by Brittany Kuhn, explores archetypal goddess images and illustrates the quality and themes of more poetry we will be happy to recruit and publish! If anyone would like to come forward as

Creative Editor to make that happen, please reach out about the possibility of joining our editorial volunteer collective.

And finally, we wish to express our gratitude to Sue Manders for her provision of a spectacular

piece of original art as the current cover. Thank you all members of the crew who have helped bring the issue into being.