Janelle Monáe’s Queer, Afrofuturist Literary Debut
THE MEMORY LIBRARIAN And Other Stories of Dirty Computer By Janelle Monáe Janelle Monáe’s love of science fiction courses through her music like blood.
The promotional artwork and music videos for her early albums and EPs pulled heavily from canonical sci-fi films such as “Metropolis,” “Blade Runner” and “I, Robot,” variously styling Monáe as a robot and android.
Inspired by the alienation and oppression that artificial intelligence faces in these fictional worlds, Monáe channels her own experiences of estrangement as a queer, working-class Black woman into lush and theatrical songs about love under siege by an invasive state.
In her best work, these sci-fi flourishes blend seamlessly into her fusionist music, flavoring her “neon gumbo” but not defining it. “The Memory Librarian,” an anthology that adapts the themes of Monáe’s 2018 album, “Dirty Computer,” into literature, lacks that proportion, its flimsy tales drenched in sci-fi tropes but thin on compelling storytelling.
