How Long ‘Til Black Future Month (2018) collects short stories from N.K. Jemisin‘s career dating back roughly twenty years, meaning they stretch before she was one of the faces of contemporary imaginative fiction.
It’s a fun collection to read, perhaps the introduction most of all, where Jemisin details some of the challenges she faced in the field. Challenges is too vague a term: imaginative fiction has, for decades, been oppressively resistant to anything but CIS white male perspectives (making the accomplishments of Octavia Butler, Samuel Delaney, and countless others all the more remarkable). This resistance exists at all levels: publishers, marketers, agents, writing classes. Everywhere.
Jemisin sketches her experience with great insight, and quite aware of how lucky she has been to be “selected” as a trailblazer. More interesting, for me, is the development of the stories (which are presented chronologically), which not only show her growth as a writer, but also her growing willingness to include a wider diversity of characters and topics.
Of special note is Stone Hunger, the first story set in the world that became the Broken Earth trilogy.