children of NAN: Mothership

children of NAN: Mothership begins with a prologue that tells of a distant post apocalyptic future where there are only two groups left on the planet: a group of black women called the Abassi or the sibyls, who were the ensured balance among humans, and a group of white men led by the “scientist.” Children of NAN uses science fiction tropes, historical and anthropological narrative, and origin mythology of race, mysticism and gender. It’s my survival guide built out of a history of storytelling, myth and an oppressive, disempowering, incorrect, or otherwise missing historical narrative about Black women in America. The protaganist, Aditi 34 has only known life underground in a lab where she was created with her three sisters. Their maker, the Scientist, keeps them locked away for their "own safety." Her only connection to the outside world is an archive that gives her insight to how they came to be underground. She and her sisters start to have visions of their mother, NAN, and the outside world and even one another in a different life. One by one her sisters begin to disappear and Aditi 34 must escape the lab, go above ground and search through time and space for her sisters and NAN.

This search for mother becomes a reflexive metaphor for the collective survival of black women.