Navigating Platform Economies in Afrofuturist Publishing in Brazil: Editora Kitembo, Hip-Hop, and Literatura Marginal

Established by cultural producers with backgrounds in São Paulo’s hip-hop and literatura marginal [marginal literature] scenes in 2018, Editora Kitembo is Brazil’s first Afrofuturist publisher. The publisher’s efforts to publish, bibliographically register, and distribute fantasy works in the genre has contributed to a recent boom in Afrofuturist artistic production and thought in the country (Brock, “Brazilian Afrofuturism”; Brock, “Genre Infrastructure”). This article draws on discussions with one of Kitembo’s founders and engagement with its activities at two literary fairs in early 2024 to shed light on its motives and methods for expanding Afrofuturist publishing in Brazil. Mapping how Kitembo builds on and adapts forms of cultural activism with roots in São Paulo’s peripheries to disseminate speculative works by Black authors in an age of platform capitalism (Srnicek), this article offers an expanded genealogy of Afrofuturism in Brazil. It shows how, though in constant dialogue with Afrodiasporic communities and cultural expressions from the US and beyond, recent efforts to increase Afrofuturist publishing in Brazil cannot be dissociated from specific forms of community organizing and cultural production that respond to socio-spatial segregation and unequal access to cultural opportunities in the country’s biggest city.