'To Avenging My People': Speculating Revenge for US Slavery in Dwayne Alexander Smith’s Forty Acres

Hawkes explores Dwayne Alexander Smith’s 2014 novel, Forty Acres, contending that it pushes against traditional historical and speculative fiction by questioning which realities are possible if people try to “fix” rather than merely critique history. If black rage, or “black noise” in the novel, represents a psychological extension of US slavery in the twenty-first century, then the cure that the characters in the novel envision is a return to the moment where the illness began by avenging their ancestors who were captured and enslaved. That revenge results in the establishment of a secret society of successful black men who kidnap and enslave white people. Drawing on legal theories of revenge and retribution, Hawkes examines Forty Acres as a “speculative revenge narrative” and asks how one can decide who is a worthy recipient of punishment, how Smith engages with speculative fiction to tell this story, and how the text considers US slavery and its complex aftermath.