5 books that 21 Black Futures playwright and poet Syrus Marcus Ware loved reading

Ware is a contributor to 21 Black Futures, an anthology series featuring 63 Black Canadian playwrights, directors and performers addressing the question, "What is the future of Blackness?"

Presented by CBC Arts in partnership with Obsidian Theatre Company, all three seasons of 21 Black Futures are now available to watch on CBC Gem.

Ware's contribution to 21 Black Futures is titled Emmett. Written by Ware, directed by Tanisha Taitt and performed by Prince Amponsah, Emmett is a monodrama that looks at a speculative future impacted by a virus and climate change — as a person named Medgar makes his way along the shores of the Great Ontario Sea and remembers his lost love Emmett.

Ware shared five favourite reads with CBC Books.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

"I love this book. I reread this book every couple of years. I've even had a couple of quotes from the book tattooed on my body.

"I think it speaks to the now in such an important way. It is one of those prescient novels that predicted a future. Octavia Butler was writing it in the early 1990s, and she was able to predict in 2021 — which is so eerily exact and surprising — that there would be a right-wing leaning presidential hopeful whose campaign slogan is 'Make America Great Again.'

I reread this book every couple of years. I've even had a couple of quotes from the book tattooed on my body.

"She was able to predict the conditions of white supremacy and violence we're seeing in the now in such a beautiful way.

"What's important about Parable of the Sower is that it's an unlikely hero that ends up taking us through a journey of ultimately finding safety in the world. It's a Black disabled woman who is the person who is able to bring people together — to form a community and to resist the violence of the state. The book is an opportunity for us to reimagine who our heroes are and to also to start thinking for ourselves how we might survive in a post apocalyptic future."

Being Black in Canada: Highlights the stories and experiences of Black Canadians

Beyond Survival, edited by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

"This is a beautiful compilation of stories from the transformative justice movement. Transformative justice of this idea that, rather than trying to reform or change a system that is not working, we could transform society and reimagine it all together in ways that actually create safety and security.

These are people practicing caremongering and mutual aid and community and collective care.

"Clare's work is a critical analysis of the medical industrial complex, exploring disability justice and thinking through disability at this moment in this decade."

My cerebral palsy isn't a problem to be cured, says writer Eli Clare

Rainbow Goblins by Ul de Rico

"This was my favourite child story as a kid. It tells the story of these goblins that try to drain the colours of the rainbow. But the plants are able to hear the plot of the goblins and they're able to tell the rainbow, just in time, to pull up from the earth so the goblins can't drain the colour. So that's why the rainbow doesn't touch the earth and is just hovering above the sky.

I loved this idea that the plants could talk to us and that the plants and nature were connected.

"This was one of the books that made me want to become an artist because the illustrations were so incredibly beautiful and the colours were so saturated. I would ask my mother, who's a visual artist as well, to read me that book over and over again. I love looking at the pictures.

"I loved this idea that the plants could talk to us and that the plants and nature were connected. It definitely speaks to me as an artist, still to this day."

Syrus Marcus Ware's comments have been edited for length and clarity

Africa Black World

Tuesday 15 February 2022