This project focuses on and centers queer speculative disability narratives. I focus exclusively on these narratives because I believe strongly in their transformative and liberatory power for queer disabled communities. I chose speculative narratives because of their imaginative power and ability to destabilize and reimagine the ways that we move through and think about our present and our future. But what exactly is a queer speculative disability narrative? And what does it mean in the context of this project?

Speculative fiction is often used as an umbrella term for all “non-realist” narratives. Some examples of speculative fiction are: 

• Fantasy → Think dragons, magic, wizards, etc.
• Science Fiction → Space! Robots! Clones! 
• Dystopian / Utopian → The world is destroyed! Or it's perfect!
• Alternative History → What if….?
• Magical Realism → Things are normal and fine except for that one dude who can fly.
• Ghost story / Paranormal → What’s that bump in the night? 
• Horror → Scary monsters!
• Superheroes → Captain America but gay.
• Vampires, Zombies, Werewolves, Fairy Tales, etc! (Remember Twilight? Yeah, that’s speculative fiction)

Speculative fiction is defined and understood differently by different communities. For the purpose of this project, I am defining speculative fiction as any media form that has some narrative structure and where anything strange happens. This is purposefully vague and open-ended. What I am most interested in is the way that speculative elements provide space for queer, disabled folks to create, lead, sustain, and dream of a future or alternate world that centers queer disabled experiences. Because of that desire, I did not limit this project to any one narrative form. The pieces that I present demonstrate this space for possibility for queer disabled communities (and other multiply marginalized communities). Some may do this more or better than others. I welcome your thoughts, ideas, feedback, etc. You can find a suggestion box here where you can suggest pieces to add, remove, or other ways that this resource could be more equitable.

This project is indebted to the scholars, writers, activists, thinkers, and communities who have long advocated for the imagined as a space of possibility. Speculative narratives do not have to follow the rules of reality. They often intentionally counteract, contradict, and/or dream beyond our known reality. It is this openness that creates space for possibility. This space of possibility can be powerful for anyone, but is particularly so for marginalized communities. Speculative narratives allow marginalized communities to imagine or build a world in which oppression or marginalization is altered, lessened, reimagined, or removed altogether. Speculative narratives ask us to investigate what creates marginalization and oppression in our reality, and how we can dismantle those forces to create a more just and liberated future for all marginalized communities.

In her essay, “Black Feminist Futures: From Survival Rhetoric to Radical Speculation,” Caitlin Gunn argues that speculative narratives allow for Black communities, particularly Black women, to “imagine futures, reclaim histories, and create alternate realities” (Gunn 16).  She advocates specifically for “radical speculation” rooted in Black feminism: “Speculation is radical when we imagine futures unbound by ideologies and structures designed to delimit black lives. Radical speculation is therefore a framework fit for dismantling white supremacy” (Gunn 16). Gunn emphasizes the power of “radical speculation” as a reclamatory tool capable of “dismantling white supremacy.” It is because Black communities can “imagine futures, reclaim histories, and create alternate realities” in speculative narratives that the space for radicalization is created. While the focus of my project is not explicitly on Black feminist imagined futures, in order for queer disabled futures to be possible, we must first ensure that Black futures, particularly Black, queer, trans, disabled futures, are possible. 

Dr. Sami Schalk’s book, Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, is an essential text in this project. Schalk does some incredible exploration of multiply marginalized identities, and she advocates for what speculative fiction offers to Black, disabled, queer communities. She particularly highlights the flexible nature of speculative form, and what this flexibility provides for us in the now: 

Speculative fiction’s nonrealist conventions can be used to highlight the socially constructed, and therefore mutable, nature of concepts like (dis)ability, race, and gender. By reimagining the meanings and possibilities of bodyminds, speculative fiction can alter the meanings of these categories, requiring readers and critics alike to adapt our modes of reading, interpretation, and analysis or develop new ones (Schalk, Bodyminds 9). 

Schalk intentionally refuses to place critics or theorists apart from the authors of these works and their readers. In doing so approach, she emphasizes the power of the creators of these speculative worlds, as well as the necessity of all of these voices in order to reach a collective, just future. 

Imagining our future is not just desired, but required in order to reach it, according to Marie Jakober in her essay, “The Continuum of Meaning: A Reflection on Speculative Fiction and Society.” Jakober insists that, “While facts can persuade us, sometimes emotions and shared experience can persuade us more effectively. However, even if we wish to work for change, we cannot move in directions we do not see. We cannot work for a future we have not imagined” (Jakober, “The Continuum” 30). Jakober insists that working towards a more just future requires us to speculate. By imagining, speculating, and dreaming, we are providing a map for the future that we desire. In order to ensure that our future is the collective liberation state that we dream of, we must first draw the map to get there. 

The speculative narratives included in this project approach liberation in a number of ways. Because of this, I categorized these narratives by their speculative tool or form. The sections are as follows: (Embodied) Magic, The Superhero & the Supercrip, (Beyond) Queer Crip Time, “Cripping the Apocalypse,” Space is an (Inaccessible) Place, and Mirrored & Layered Universes. Each of these sections examines how a set of narratives interrogate, question, or reimagine liberation utilizing the above-mentioned speculative tools or tropes. (Embodied) Magic examines instances in which magic is located within the body, and what this means for both the characters in the narrative and marginalized folks in the now. The Supercrip & the Superhero explores the intersections of “supercrip” and superhero stories, and how these narratives subvert or expose intersections of “superhuman-ness," disability, and queerness. (Beyond) Queer Crip Time focuses on narratives that challenge chronological understandings of time. This section is particularly informed by Alison Kafer’s definition of queer crip time, but explores the ways that the works of authors like Rivers Solomon present a more nuanced and POC-centered take on Kafer’s term. “Cripping the Apocalypse,” titled and informed by the essay of the same name by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarinsinha, asks who has a place in the apocalypse, and the value of queer disabled voices in such a future. Space is an (Inaccessible) Place parses the ways that ableism informs how we imagine the physical spaces of our future, and the impact of this on disabled communities in the now. Lastly, Mirror Universes & Layered Realities asks how alternate or parallel realities provide opportunity for more nuanced understandings of disability, gender, and sexuality.